Hostage To The Devil

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on one: against sat

AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE JESUIT

"The most shattering book on demonic possession isn't fiction at all but

MALACHI MARTIN'S spellbinding work of interpretive reporting."

— New York (Sunday) Daily News

lostage to the Devil is a controversial nonfiction bestseller — a chilling and
rue account of possession and exorcism in modern America — hailed by NBC
ladio as "one of the most stirring books on the contemporary scene."

"Martin is above all serious. He is not speaking about madness, about illusions

or the irrational, but about the real beyond all reason. . . . He presents exorcism

as ... a titanic clash of wills that threatens the lives, the sanity, even the

souls of all attending." — Newsweek

"In the barrage of books on possession and exorcism, this is undoubtedly the most
authoritative and convincing." — The Washington Post Book Review

"Martin's polished contemporary sense of traditional theology entices even the

skeptical. . . . Stunningly pertinent . . . Will set you thinking — and

thinking — and thinking. " — Detroit News

A A LAC HI MARTIN — eminent theologian, premier authority on the Roman
Catholic Church, and former professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblica
nstitute — is the author of such national bestsellers as The Final Conclave, Vatican,
r he Jesuits, and 77?^ Keys of This Blood. His most recent book is Windswept House: A
r atican Novel.

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About Hostage to the Devil

"[Martin] presents exorcism itself as a perilous personal meeting'
between priest and devil, a titanic clash of wills that threatens the
lives, the sanity, even the souls of all attending."

— Newsweek

"Martin builds a gathering, glowing light of love, compassion, and
faith. Hostage to the Devil is surely one of the most stirring books .
on the contemporary scene."
-NBC Radio

"In the barrage of books on possession and exorcism . . . this is
undoubtedly the most authoritative and convincing."
—The Washington Post Book Review

"He brings a hellish tale, but with a heavenly message."
—The Baltimore Sun

"Unmatched. . . . Martin's polished contemporary sense of traditional
theology entices even the skeptical. . . . Stunningly pertinent. . . .
Will set you thinking — and thinking— and thinking."

— Detroit News

"First-rate . . . enlightening and thought-provoking . . . decidedly

recommended."

— The Sunday Denver Post

"An amazing and extraordinary book. Both believers and non-
believers will read it all the way through with not a dull moment."

— Chattanooga Free Press

"Sheds new light on the age-old confrontation of good and evil."
—The Pittsburgh Press

"This is the strength of Hostage to the Devil: it offers insight . . . into
the more personal evil of everyday life."

— Harvard Crimson

About Malachi Martin

"In biblical times, they would have called him a prophet."
—The Dallas Morning News

"Martin is concerned with the fate of modern man. . . . [He] has an
ability to argue a case very forcefully . . . and make strong
judgments."

— New York Times Book Review

"He gives fascinating, almost poetic, accounts of religious
experiences."

— Chicago Daily News

"There is a magnetism about him that draws from others thoughts
and feelings they didn't know were there. He is a weaver of spells
with words."

— San Francisco Examiner

"Malachi Martin is one of the most fascinating writers in the reli-
gious field today."

— Sunday Houston Chronicle

"One of the world's most scholarly yet passionate authors. Malachi
Martin is probably one of the finest writers alive."

— Psychology Today Book Club

"His writing is moving and intelligent. And in his writing, he has
won a victory over the forces of evil."

— Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate

Hostage
to the
Devil

Books by Malachi Martin

The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Pilgrim (under the pseudonym Michael Serafian)

The Encounter

Three Popes and the Cardinal

Jesus Now

The New Castle

Hostage to the Devil

The Final Conclave

King of Kings (a novel)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church

There Is Still Love

Rich Church, Poor Church

Vatican (a novel)

The Jesuits

Then Keys of This Blood

Windswept House: A Vatican Novel

The Possession and Exorcism
of Five Living Americans

Malachi Martin

©

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All of the men and women involved in the five cases reported here are known to me person-
ally; they have given their fullest cooperation on the condition that their identities and those
of their families and friends not be revealed. This stricture has, of necessity, been extended
to the publisher who has therefore not verified the book's contents other than the authors
personal assurance, and the publisher's own verification from independent sources that exor-
cisms have been and continue to be performed currently in the United States. All names and
places and any other elements that could conceivably lead to the possible identification of
the people involved in the cases reported here have been changed. Any similarity between
the cases reported here and any others that may have occurred is unintentional and purely
coincidental.

A hardcover edition of this book was published by Reader's Digest Press. It is here reprinted
by arrangement with the author.

hostage to the devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Americans. Copyright © 1976 by
Malachi Martin. Preface copyright © 1992 by Malachi Martin. All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any man-
ner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles and reviews. For information address Lila Karpf Literary Management, 225
East 63rd Street, New York, NY 10021 .

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For
information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd
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HarperCollins®, mS®, and HarperOne™ are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

FIRST PERENNIAL LIBRARY EDITION PUBLISHED IN I987;
HARPERSANFRANCISCO EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Malachi.

Hostage to the devil : the possession and exorcism of five Americans /
Malachi Martin. — HarperSanFrancisco ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Reader's Digest, 1976.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-0-06-065337-8

1. Exorcism — United States — Case studies. 2. Demoniac possession — United
States — Case studies. 3. Exorcism. 4. Demoniac possession. I. Title.
BX2340.M35 1992
265'. 94— dc20 92-53900

07 08 09 10 11 RRD(H) 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33

Preface to the New Edition:
Possession and Exorcism
in America in the 1990s

In the blink of God's eye since Hostage to the Devil was first published
in 1976, nothing has changed on the one hand. And everything has
changed on the other.

Nothing has changed in the process by which an individual is Pos-
sessed by personal and intelligent evil. Nothing has changed, either,
in the requirements for successful Exorcism of a Possessed individ-
ual. All of that remains as described and summarized in the chapters
and cases that follow.

What have changed are the conditions of the society in which we
all now live. To a far greater degree than most of us could have imag-
ined fifteen or so years ago, a favorable climate for the occurrence of
demonic Possession has developed as the normal condition of our
lives.

In 1976 Satanism was presented, and was probably regarded by
most Americans, as a box office and a bookstore draw. In fact, Hostage
to the Devil was intended as a clear warning that Possession is not —
nor was it ever — some tale of dark fancy featuring ogres and happy
endings. Possession is real; and real prices are paid.

Now, in America of the 1990s, there is little question of demonic
Possession as an entertainment. Among families everywhere and at
every level of society, there is instead a justifiable fear. Most of all, this
fear is for children. And in point of fact, there are few families not

XII PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

already affected in some way by Satanism. Even by ritualistic Satan-
ism—formal ceremonies and rites organized and performed by indi-
viduals and groups in professed worship of Satan.

For obvious reasons, we don't know everything about organized
Satanist groups, or covens as they are called, in the United States. But
the ample knowledge we do have justifies the fear among average
families for their children and their way of life in the future.

We know, for example, that throughout all fifty states of the Union,
there are now something over 8,000 Satanist covens. We know that in
any major American city or large town, a Black Mass — almost always
organized by covens — is available on a weekly basis at least, and at
several locations. We know that the average membership of Satanist
covens is drawn from all the professions as well as from among politi-
cians, clergy, and religious.

We know further that within those covens, a certain amount of
"specialization" has come about. One can choose either a heterosex-
ual or a homosexual coven, for example. In at least three major cities,
members of the clergy have at their disposal at least one pedophiliac
coven peopled and maintained exclusively by and for the clergy.
Women religious can find a lesbian coven maintained in a similar way.

We know, too, that in many public schools in any major city, it is a
virtual surety that there is at least one group of teenagers engaged in
ritualist Satanism. And though we know very little — again for obvi-
ous reasons — about human sacrifice as an element in ritualist Satan-
ism, we do know that in certain covens in which confidentiality is an
absolute, life-or-death condition, the penalty for attempting to quit
the coven is ritual death by knife, with one stab wound inflicted for
every year of the offending member's life.

Hard admissible evidence concerning human sacrifice as an ele-
ment in Satanist rituals is limited by the fact that disposal of human
remains has been developed into one of the dark art forms within
Satanist circles through use of portable incinerators and cremetoria;
and because there are no birth or baptismal records — no records of
existence — of intended Victim infants.

Nevertheless, we have enormous amounts of anecdotal evidence
indicating that some thousands of infants and children are intention-
ally conceived and born to serve as Victims in Satanist sacrificial
rites. In the world of Satanist worship, boys are preferred as gender-
replicas of the Christ Child. But girls are by no means excluded.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XIII

In this regard, the emergence of child abuse as a characteristic of
our time must claim particular attention. Not all — perhaps not even
most — child abuse originates in ritualist Satanism per se. Each case
must be weighed on the evidence. But the extent of child abuse in
America today and the concrete evidence of Satanism as a factor in
many such cases, begins to give some idea of the degree to which the
inverted standards that are the prime hallmark of Satanist activity in
any form — and of ritualist Satanism above all — have infiltrated and
influenced all levels of our society.

As horrifying as even that much information is — though it is not all
of the information we have, by any means — still more shocking is the
realization of the fact that in this, the America of the 1990s, one is
never far from a center where such activity is carried out on a routine
basis. No one lives far from some geographical area where some form
of ritualistic Satanism is practiced. Ritualistic Satanism and its in-
evitable consequence, demonic Possession, are now part and parcel
of the atmosphere of life in America.

That a more favorable climate exists now than ever before for the
occurrence of demonic Possession among the general population is
so clear, that it is attested to daily by competent social and psycholog-
ical experts, who for the most part, appear to have no "religious bias."

Our cultural desolation — a kind of agony of aimlessness coupled
with a dominant self-interest — is documented for us in the disin-
tegration of our families. In the breakup of our educational system.
In the disappearance of publicly accepted norms of decency in lan-
guage, dress and behavior. In the lives of our youth, everywhere
deformed by stunning violence and sudden death; by teenage preg-
nancy; by drug and alcohol addiction; by disease; by suicide; by fear.
America is arguably now the most violent of the so-called developed
nations of the world.

Parents do have every reason to be concerned, then. For above all,
the greatest changes in the conditions in which we have come to live
over the past twenty years or so have meant that young people are left
as the most defenseless against the possibility of Possession. Raised
more and more in an atmosphere where moral criticism is not
merely out of fashion, but prohibited, they swim with little help in a
veritable sea of pornography. Not merely sexual pornography, but the
pornography of unmitigated self-interest. Whether spoken or acted

XIV PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

out without explanation, the dominant question of the younger
generations among us is, What can you do for me? What can my par-
ents, my friends, my acquaintances, my enemies, my government, my
country, do for me?

The difficulty is that as individuals and as a society, we are no
longer willing— many of us are no longer able — to give an answer to
that question that will satisfy anyone for long.

Such pervasive cultural desolation is the most fertile ground one
could possible imagine for the causes of Possession to take root and
flourish in almost unimpeded freedom. It is in this context that
Satanism — including ritualized Satanism — is causing such justified
fear among so many parents for their children. For, it is in that con-
text that at least some may best be sought out by that Ancient Enemy
of our race who, in the words St. Peter used in one of his letters,
"prowls around like a lion seeking whom he can devour."

To describe the situation in which Satanist activity is flourishing
around us is one thing. But it is essential to identify in an equally can-
did manner at least a few of the major cultural and religious factors
that have contributed most importantly to such a state of affairs.

In doing so, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the vigorous
state of ritualist Satanism, and the difficulty of dealing with it effec-
tively, are at least enhanced by the noticeably changed mentality
among Christian churchmen. As a Roman Catholic priest, I speak
most pointedly of Catholic bishops and priests. But there is responsi-
bility enough to go around, alas.

Exorcism, as exemplified in the five cases described in the pages
of Hostage to the Devil, deals with a bodiless, genderless creature
whom Jesus identified by name as Lucifer, and as Satan. A creature
whom Jesus identified further as "the Father of Lies and a Murderer
from the Beginning." The existence and the activities of Satan are
integral elements in traditional Roman Christianity, and in all other
genuine forms of that religion.

Originally an Archangel, Lucifer led a rebellion in disobedience to
God and, with his legions of companion angels, was condemned out-
right by God to Hell. In their state of eternal separation from their
Creator, these creatures have always been known as demons.

In God's mysterious providence, Satan has a certain liberty to try to

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XV

thwart God's will that all men and women be cleansed of personal sin
and die in God's friendship and love.

To the extent that Satan acquires a certain number of individuals
as his worshippers and servants in this world, he is successful in his
continuing rebellion. Further, such individuals as Lucifer acquires
serve his purpose in willingly corrupting and co-opting other human
beings to worship and serve him.

Worship, as a word used in the Satanist context, like all other
Satanist terms, mirrors both the mind and the intent of Lucifer him-
self. It connotes the contradictory— the pointed and intentional
opposite — of its Christian meaning.

The essence of Christian worship is love. The essence of Satanist
worship is hate. For the Fallen Archangel now embodies a full hatred
of being, as such. Hatred of life, love, beauty, happiness, truth — of all
that makes existence the greatest possible good. Satanist worship is a
celebration of all that.

In broad outline, that is the basic knowledge and understanding of
Satan, and of the Satanist agenda, that Christians have always had.

Since Hostage to the Devil was first published in 1976, however,
diminished belief among Christian churchmen — including, promi-
nently, the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy— has relegated the
very existence of Satan to the same fate as basic Roman Catholic and
Christian teaching about Hell, angels, Purgatory, personal sin, and
such essential Sacraments as Confession and the Eucharist.

It has been said by one mainstream Protestant clergyman in this
regard that — disagreement with the Roman Catholic Church not-
withstanding—the Catholic Church was always the anchor. With that
anchor lost, all flounder. Because so many in the Roman Catholic hier-
archy no longer accept these beliefs — no longer either profess or teach
accurate doctrine about the Sacraments, even — opposition to Satan-
ism, including ritualistic Satanism, has been considerably diminished.

On the other side of the coin — Lucifer's side — the belief that he
does not exist at all is an enormous advantage that he has never
enjoyed to such a great degree. It is the ultimate camouflage. Not to
believe in evil is not to be armed against it. To disbelieve is to be dis-
armed. If your will does not accept the existence of evil, you are ren-
dered incapable of resisting evil. Those with no capacity of resistance
become prime targets for Possession.

XVI PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

Just as the practical impact of large numbers of faithful clergy
among us was once so great, so now are the practical consequences
for us all — believers and nonbelievers alike — of large numbers of
unfaithful churchmen.

Among the general population of Catholics and Christians of other
denominations, large numbers of people no longer learn even so
basic a prayer as the Our Father. In churches and parochial schools
alike, the subject of Hell is avoided, as one midwestern priest put it,
in order not to put people "on a guilt trip." The idea of sin is likewise
avoided, according to the same source, in order not to do "irreparable
damage to what has been taught for the past fifteen years."

That much alone leaves every Christian at a profound and needless
disadvantage in the confrontation with evil that life brings to each of
us. Deeply felt prohibitions against mixing what is termed the
"rational" with the faith that is necessary for the recognition of evil is,
for many, an insurmountable obstacle. And without the grace that is
born of true faith, Satan does what he does best — he ceases to exist
in the eyes of those who do not see.

Still, the most dramatic and immediate harm by far that results
from such an extensive and pervasive lack of instruction falls upon
the true and valid victims of Possession. The individual victims of
personal evil, in their thousands.

The Church is the only element in society with the authority and
the availing remedy to counteract such manifest evil. If, then, the
officials charged with this basic duty of the Church deny the very
legacy of that Church — if they turn their backs even on Scriptural
descriptions of Christ casting out demons; if they characterize those
accounts as false and as literary license — then actual victims of true
demonic activity are left with no hope.

"If the salt has lost its saltiness," St. Mark quotes Christ, "where-
with will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with
one another." In a nutshell, that is the condition of some of our
clergy; and it is the plight of the Possessed in America of the 1990s.
If the Church Fathers no longer believe, then victims of demonic
Possession have nowhere to turn. They have no place to seek the
help they require and to which they have every right as afflicted
Christians.

To combine known, valid Possession with hopelessness must
surely cause the worst kind of insanity, if not death. It is a terrible

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XVII

condemnation. But at least as terrible is that those very men whose
vocation is to believe and carry out all that the Church has held since
its beginning, have abandoned those they still profess to serve in the
name of Christ.

The circle of helplessness and suffering caused by such unfaith
among churchmen does not stop with ordinary Christians and with
the Possessed, however. It widens much further.

Because of the nature of the outrages that occur in the course of
ritualistic Satanism — some extreme cases of child abuse and serial
killings are but two ready examples — officers of the law frequently
enter the picture. Faced with undeniable evidence of a Satanist
context — evidence such as Pentagrams, broken crucifixes, Satanist
graffiti, and other such paraphernalia — law officers were once able
to call on the help of clergymen expert in dealing with demonic
Possession.

Such help is rarely available today. Rather, ignorance, disinterest,
disbelief, even adamant unwillingness on the part of many Church
officials to so much as discuss demonic Possession and Exorcism, is
literally the order of the day.

In point of fact, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Order of the
Exorcist — part of every priest's ordination since time immemorial —
has been omitted from the new rite of priestly ordination, as drawn
up by innovators after 1964 in the wake of the Second Vatican
Council.

Because both demonic Possession and its remedy, the Rite of
Exorcism, are thus seen by many officials and their advisors to be
irrelevant — to be as negligible as, say, training in the use of a medi-
eval astrolabe — many Catholic dioceses, large and small, in the
United States have no official Exorcist.

In some of the more fortunate dioceses, where priests bring in ad
hoc Exorcists from out of town, the bishops of those dioceses know
nothing and want to know less. But if they are not exactly benign, at
least they turn a blind eye. And as permission of the bishop is
required for Exorcism to proceed, that blind eye can be, and is, taken
as "tacit permission."

In other dioceses, however, bishops are expressly opposed to the
rite of Exorcism. Even in such situations, there are priests who still
bring Exorcists from out of town. Their canonical justification even
here is that the bishop has given "presumed permission." That is, if

XVIII PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

the bishop believed what he should believe as bishop, and further, if
he knew about and recognized as valid a particular case of demonic
Possession, then it can be presumed he would authorize the
Exorcism,

Such theological reasoning and canonical shenanigans are not
only tortuous. They present a scenario that comes right out of the
catacombs. For the result is what can only be called an Exorcism
underground. A group of priests in one diocese networks in great and
guarded secrecy with those of other dioceses, in order to fulfill their
obligations to the faithful in need.

Ecclesiastically, this situation gives rise to irregularities, to be sure.
It also leads in some cases to unjustly imposed canonical sanctions by
irate and unbelieving bishops who maintain that their authority is
thus being flouted.

Even in such difficult circumstances, however, the incidence of
Exorcism has been on a steady rise. There has been a 750 percent
increase in the number of Exorcisms performed between the early
1960s and the mid-1970s. Over the same period, there has been an
alarming increase in the number of requested Possessions — that is,
cases in which the Possessed formally request Satan to possess
them — in comparison to the cases of incurred Possessions, which
result from other sorts of activities of the Possessed that facilitate
Possession.

Each year, some 800 to 1,300 major Exorcisms, and some thou-
sands of minor Exorcisms are performed. For experts in the field, this
is a sobering barometer of the increase in known cases of Possession.
But it is still more sobering to realize how many more cases of Posses-
sion cannot be addressed at all. The thousands of letters I receive
from people who are desperate for help — Catholic, Protestant, Evan-
gelical, and unchurched — are eloquent, anguished, and a steadily
mounting testimony to the crisis.

Law officers, meanwhile, are increasingly confronted on every side
by the incontrovertible signs of crimes committed in the course of
ritualistic Satanism or as a grisly result of an individual's participation
in such rituals. They are very often left out of the shrunken loop of
expert advice and assistance. Advice and assistance that was once
routinely to be found.

To those who are active in the field of Exorcism, and who therefore
acquire a greater than usual ability to uncover and recognize the

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XIX

marks of ritualistic Satanism for what they are, it is clear that in many
police precincts the Satanist character of a crime is either relegated
to the background or not mentioned at all — at least in public reports.

By and large, the police have no other choice. They have neither
competence nor authority in the rarefied, and dangerous field of
Satanist behavior. Beyond the fact that a meaningless recounting of
Satanist details often inspires imitation, any attempt by an officer — or
by anyone, including a trained and authorized Exorcist, as the five
cases recounted in Hostage to the Devil make clear — to free an indi-
vidual from a possessing demon places the aspiring rescuer in great
danger of demonic attack.

A similar lack of help is faced as well by therapists, psychologists,
psychiatrists, social workers, and others who, like police, must deal with
aberrant individuals. For, within the present context of life in America,
the probability of Possession having occurred in overtly sadistic or
otherwise violent, antisocial individuals is impressively high.

To the problem faced by law officers and others who must deal
with the afflictions of Satanism, the most effective answer would be
the development of a close and balanced collaboration with those
who are knowledgeable and experienced in the confidential, per-
sonal, and dangerous field of Possession and Exorcism.

To develop such a grid of cooperation in the present era, however,
may be next to impossible — given all the circumstances outlined
above, and others besides. Like the Possessed with whom they regu-
larly come in contact, such professionals are left to deal with the
problem as best they can, using the ultimately inadequate tools
provided in secular codes of law and common behavior.

As usual, however, it is the men and women of the general public
who pay the greatest price. For, even though most of us pass all our
years without coming directly across any Satanist coven as such, and
without being approached with a view to joining a coven, the absence
of any such interdisciplinary grid of cooperation among experts and
professionals has consequences that affect every one of us.

Concrete evidence in a substantial number of crimes — in certain
cases of child abuse again, for example; and in the rising national
plague of seemingly motiveless or unprovoked teen-age murders,
suicides, and rapes — lead some secular investigators to the correct
idea that one ring of child abusers, say, may be organizationally
linked to other such groups.

XX PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

Yet, as things stand at the moment, there is no lawfully admissible
evidence that a national organization of Satanist groups, or covens,
exists. Or that coven members in the United States and Canada are
consciously and deliberately engaged in a nationwide and cross-
border conspiracy. Indeed, in the United States covens can claim the
constitutional protection of law for their rites and ceremonies,
provided no infraction of that law can be attributed to them during
their professional activities as coven members.

Although the Satanist element in such groups may not be a direct
and official concern of secular law— may, indeed, be officially off lim-
its to the law— laws are nevertheless broken in the pursuit of Satanist
worship. Understanding that such groups exist in large numbers from
coast to coast, that some of those groups may be linked with other
groups, and that their activities frequently and expertly turn secular
law on its head, would doubtless go some distance in enlarging the
circle of legal competence to deal with some part of the problem, at
least on one level.

If to disbelieve is to be disarmed, the reverse is equally true. Given
the general conditions that surround us in our present society, it
becomes all the more important to realize that even in the worst con-
ditions, no person can be Possessed without some degree of coopera-
tion on his or her part. It is extremely important to be aware of at
least some of the factors that are likely to facilitate collaboration
between a possessing demon and the Possessed.

The effective cause of Possession is the voluntary collaboration of
an individual, through his faculties of mind and will, with one or
more of those bodiless, genderless creatures called demons.

While there are no causes of demonic Possession that can be phys-
ically dissected or otherwise reduced to our currently shrunken,
laboratory standards of "objectivity," it is and always has been both
possible and necessary to speak of those causes with theological
accuracy.

Demonic Possession is not a static condition, an unchanging state.
Nor does one become Possessed suddenly, the way one might break
an arm or catch the measles. Rather, Possession is an ongoing process.
A process that affects the two faculties of the soul: the mind, by
which an individual receives and internalizes knowledge. And the
will, by which an individual chooses to act upon that knowledge.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XXI

Ample experience with the Possessed has clearly demonstrated
that there are certain identifiable factors that dispose an individual to
collaborate, in mind and will, with a Possessing demon. Disposing
factors, therefore.

The presence of such disposing factors in a person's life does not in
itself portend that the person will surely one day be numbered
among the Possessed. At the same time, and with only rare excep-
tions in my experience, one or several of these disposing factors are
operational in genuine cases of Possession.

Some of the most common disposing factors have been with us for
a long time, while others are of more recent vintage. Some are in the
nature of "instruments" outside the individual — the Ouija Board, for
example, and the Spiritual Seance. Others are in the nature of "atti-
tudes," whether taught or self-learned, that are interiorized by the
person —Transcendental Meditation and the Enneagram Method are
two of the most prominent in this category

In the context of Possession, all disposing factors produce within a
person a condition of those two faculties of soul — mind and will — that
is most aptly described as an aspiring vacuum. Vacuum, because there
is created an absence of clearly defined and humanly acceptable con-
cepts for the mind. Aspiring, because there is a corresponding absence
of clearly defined and humanly acceptable goals for the will.

In the case of the Ouija Board, or that of the Seance or TM or the
Enneagram Method, the participants must dispose themselves pre-
cisely with a view to being opened up; to becoming desirous and
accepting of whatever happens along.

The very term, Ouija, for example, is a display of this opening up
for the term is composed of the French and German words — Qui and
Ja — for Yes. The attitude of the participant in Ouija is literally "Yes,
yes." The mind is to be made receptive to whatever suggestions or
concepts are presented. If participants also dispose their wills to
accept those concepts and act on them, then the predisposing circuit
is complete. The aspiring vacuum is operative and is powerful
enough to flood the mind with appropriate concepts that can make a
bid for the will's assent.

Often enough, the mind and the will are opened up in precisely
this fashion in view of Possession.

Among the vast array of disposing factors likely to lead to Posses-
sion, the Enneagram Method is nowadays far and away the most

XXII PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

common and pernicious. Given the general state of religion, it is not
surprising that the Method's popularity is enormously enhanced by
its having been enthusiastically adopted and propagated by Catholic
theologians and teachers from the major religious Orders — Jesuit,
Dominican, and Franciscan — and by some of the official organs used
by the bishops of the United States and Canada charged with teach-
ing religious doctrine to young and adult Catholics.

Moreover, because the Enneagram Method is currently presented
as an authorized teaching of the North American Forum on the
Catechumenate — the body that supplies to the parishes and dio-
ceses of the United States and Canada precisely those materials
intended to bring communities and individuals to maturity of
faith — the Method penetrates the full fabric of religious belief and
participation, literally from cradle to grave.

So effective has the Enneagram Method become in strangling gen-
uine Catholic faith, that it is now considered by some as the most
lethal threat to date in the campaign being waged to liquidate ortho-
dox Catholic belief among the faithful.

True to its name — enneagram means "nine points," or "marks'— the
Enneagram is a nine-pointed mandala-type figure within a circle.
The mandala character of the Enneagram is meant to represent the
lotus and, as described by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, is "a symbol
depicting the endeavor to reunite the self."

The Enneagram came to the West from a now dead Asianic spiri-
tual master, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff claimed in turn
that it originated with the Sufi Masters of Islam. It reached the
United States via "spiritual teachers" in Chile, Bolivia, and Peru and
in the early 1970s was first broadcast here from the Esalen Institute
in Big Sur, California, and Loyola University in Chicago. There is now
abundant literature on the subject.

According to Enneagram teaching, there are exactly nine types of
human personality, each of which is represented by one of the nine
points of the Enneagram figure. Each human being is inalterably
confined to one, and only one, of those personality types. But within
his or her type, each person is infinitely self-perfectible.

Two characteristics of the Enneagram Method comprise moral
teachings that are irreconcilable with the basic moral teachings of
Catholics in particular and Christians in general.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XXIII

The basic presumption presented to the mind by the Enneagram
Method is that each individual is self-perfectible, morally speaking,
within that individual's personality type.

This presumption is in reality a late revival of an ancient heresy
known as Pelagianism. It is at odds with the basic Christian teaching
that we absolutely depend on the action of divine grace for all moral
perfection. Of ourselves, we are helpless. Not only are we not infi-
nitely self-perfectible; we will never of ourselves even escape the grip
of our sinful nature. Only supernatural grace enables us to do that.
And that grace is simply gratuitous on God's part.

The teaching of the Enneagram Method cuts both God and his
grace out of the loop. In fact, there is no longer any loop at all. The
individual is cut off from effective knowledge of his or her depen-
dence on God and his supernatural grace for ultimate perfection. He
or she is confined to an inalterable personality type, which has been
laid out by Enneagram Masters.

The second faulty moral characteristic of the Enneagram Method
completes the damage caused by the first. Having fatalistically ac-
cepted one's own category, the participant is dependent for perfec-
tion on the Enneagramatic exercises suitable for one's personality
type. In other words, the soul of the Enneagram disciple is opened
out and made docile, with the goal of receiving the promised self-
knowledge congruent with his or her type. The soul becomes an apt
and classic receptor — an aspiring vacuum — ready for the approach
of an intending Possessor.

In such a setting, the intending Possessor may come as what St.
Paul described with dramatic precision as an Angel of Light. But the
danger is all the more insidious for that. For in such a situation, the
condition commonly called "perfect Possession" may be the result.

As the term implies, a victim of perfect Possession is absolutely
controlled by evil and gives no outward indication, no hint what-
soever, of the demonic residing within. He or she will not cringe, as
others who are Possessed will, at the sight of such religious symbols
as a crucifix or a Rosary. The perfectly Possessed will not bridle at the
touch of Holy Water, nor hesitate to discuss religious topics with
equanimity.

If convicted of crimes against the law, such a victim will frequently
acknowledge "guilt," and even the moral "badness" of the acts

XXIV PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

committed. More often than not, such a person will petition that his
physical life be forfeited; that he be executed for his crimes. Thus, in
his own way, he voices the insistent Satanist preference for death over
life, and the fixated desire to join the Prince in his kingdom.

Because there is no will left to call the victim's own — and because
some part of the victim's will is necessary for any hope of successful
Exorcism — remedy is unlikely to succeed even in the event the Pos-
session should somehow be uncovered and verified as the problem.

In a very real sense, all of us — the Possessed, the professionals who
must so frequently deal with them; the parents who fear for their
children; everyone who lives in a society degraded by happenings
that were only recently unimaginable to us — all are in the same boat.

Even such a sober-sided and rationally minded publication as The
New York Times sees fit from time to time to print the most somber
laments and predictions. Take, for example, the March 15, 1992, arti-
cle by Robert Stone in which he says flatly that "our nation signifies
the virtual apotheosis of the interested self." And in which he goes on
to point out that "human nature rejects [self interest] as an end,
requiring something higher and finer." Then, speaking pointedly of
the younger generations among us, Stone raises a bleak warning: "If
we cannot furnish them with a cause beyond the realization of their
individual desires, all [of America's] past successes may be rendered
meaningless."

That is but one warning parents all across this land might well see
fit to tack on the door of every recalcitrant bishop, every unbelieving
churchman.

They might justifiably tack on those doors as well a reminder of St.
Paul's admonition to the sorcerer Elymas. On the pretext of instruct-
ing Sergius Paulus, "a prudent man," Elymas attempted instead to
corrupt him. Never one to suffer such duplicity or to mince words,
always prepared to bare his own soul, Paul, we are told, "filled with
the Holy Ghost," rounded against the pretender. "Oh, full of all guile
and of all deceit"— Paul said that day— "son of the devil, enemy of all
justice, you do not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord."

Yet, surely the most important reminder to our churchmen is also
the simplest and the most direct. A reminder of the admonition of
Christ himself to his Apostles as they were beset in their little boat by

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION XXV

the fury of a storm on Lake Gennesaret: "How is it that you have no
faith?"

Of the five Exorcees whose cases are recounted in Hostage to the
Devil, none was perfectly Possessed. Hence, they were all apt sub-
jects for the Rite of Exorcism. Their fortunes and lives have varied
considerably since their individual Exorcisms. None fell back into
Possession.

Marianne K. took training as a dental technician, married, and lived
for nearly seventeen years. She died of cancer in the early 1980s.

Jonathan Yves is retired from the active priesthood. He entered
the field of computers for a time, but has since abandoned that work
and now lives with relatives. He never married.

Richard O. led a very active life as a counselor and therapist for a
number of years in the United States before he migrated to Europe,
where he died at the end of the last decade.

Jamsie Z. pursued his career in radio and is now semi-retired as
the president of a company he founded.

Carl V. tested his religious vocation in more than one monastery
before he decided to live almost as a hermit in a remote part of the
United States. More than the other four Excorcees described in Hos-
tage to the Devil, Carl attained what more than one of his acquain-
tances readily call holiness. In the last two or three years of his life, he
was graced with a special insight into the spiritual anguish of men
and women who sought him out for counsel. Many of them speak of
the radiance in his look and the power he had to bring peace to trou-
bled minds.

Of the Exorcists who presented themselves as hostages to Satan
for the liberation of his victims, Father Peter, Father David M., and
Father Gerald are dead. Father Mark A. is living in a home for retired
priests. Father Hartney F. may be the only one to reach the age of one
hundred. Still living and retired to a nursing home, Father Hartney is
afflicted with severe arthritis and is able to say Mass only with intense
difficulty.

All five of these Exorcists trained several other men and included
in their instruction the wisdom and the selflessness needed for any-
one who would voluntarily give himself as hostage in order to liberate
another from the bondage of Possession.

XXVI PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

The epitaph on the tombstone of the gentle Father Gerald is tes-
timony to the vocation of all these men, and it is witness to the source
of their strength. For that epitaph is from the mouth of the loving
Lord in whose glory Gerald now rests: "Greater love than this no man
hath, than that a man lay down his life for his friend."

Malachi Martin
New York
April 1992

How are you fallen from Heaven,

Lucifer! Son of the Dawn!

Cut down to the ground!

And once you dominated the peoples!

Didn't you say to yourself:

I will be as high as Heaven!

I will be more exalted than the stars of God!

I will, indeed, be the supreme leader!

In the privileged places!

I will be higher than the Skies!

I will be the same as the Most High God!

But you shall be brought down to Hell,

to the bottom of its pit.

And all who see you,

will despise you. . . . — Isaiah 14:12-19

. . . "Lord! In your name, even evil spirits are under
our control!"

And He said to them: "I saw Satan falling like

lightning from Heaven.

You know: I gave you power . . .

over all the strength of Satan. . . .

Nevertheless, don't take pride in the fact

that spirits are subject to your control,

but, rather, because you belong to God . . .

The Father has given Me all power. . . ." — Luke 10:17-22

The Fate
of an Exorcist

Michael Strong-
Part I

When the search party reached the disused grain store known locally
as Puh-Chi (One Window), the bombing of Nanking was at its height.
The night sky was bright with incandescent flares and filled with
explosions. Japanese incendiaries were wreaking havoc on Nanking's
wooden buildings. It was December 11, 1937, about 10:00 p.m. The
Yangtze delta all the way down to the sea was in Japanese hands.
From Shanghai on the coast to within two miles of Nanking was a
devastated area on which death had settled like a permanent
atmosphere. Nanking was next on the invaders' list. And defenseless.
December 13 was to be its death date.

For one week the police of a southern Nanking city precinct had
been looking for Thomas Wu. The charge: murder of at least five
women and two men in the most horrible circumstances: Thomas Wu,
the story was, had killed his victims and eaten their bodies. At the end
of one week's fruitless searching, Father Michael Strong, the mission-
ary parish priest of the district, who had baptized Thomas Wu, sent
word unexpectedly that he had found the wanted man in the barnlike
Puh-Chi. But the police captain did not understand the message
Father Michael had sent him: "I am conducting an exorcism. Please
give me some time." *

* This is the only exorcism reported in this book for which I have no transcript and could not
conduct extensive interviews. My sole source was Father Michael himself, who recounted these
events to me and allowed me to read his diaries.

4 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

The main door of Puh-Chi was ajar when the police chief arrived. A
small knot of men and women stood watching. They could see Father
Michael standing in the middle of the floor. Over in one corner there
was another figure, a young, naked man, suddenly ravished by an
unnatural look of great age, a long knife in his hands. On the shelves
around the inner walls of the storehouse lay rows and rows of naked
corpses in various stages of mutilation and putrefaction.

"YOU!!" the naked man was screaming as the police captain
elbowed his way to the door, "YOU want to know MY name!" The
words "you" and "my" hit the captain like two clenched fists across
the ears. He saw the priest visibly wilt and stagger backward. But,
even so, it was the voice that made the captain wonder. He had known
Thomas Wu. Never had he heard him speak with such a voice.

"In the name of Jesus," Michael began weakly, "you are com-
manded . . ."

"Get outa here! Get the hell outa here, you filthy old eunuch!"

"You will release Thomas Wu, evil spirit, and ..."

"I'm taking him with me, pigmy," came the voice from Thomas Wu.
"I'm taking him. And no power anywhere, anywhere, you hear, can
stop us. We are as strong as death. No one stronger! And he wants to
come! You hear? He wants to!"

"Tell me your name ..."

The priest was interrupted by a sudden roaring. No one there could
say later how the fire started. An incendiary? A spark carried by the
wind from burning Nanking? It was like a sudden, noisy ambush
sprung by a silent signal. In a flash the fire had jumped up, a living red
weed running around the sides of the storehouse, along the curved
roof, and across the wooden floor by the walls.

The police captain was already inside, and he gripped Father
Michael by the arm, pulling him outside.

The voice of Wu pursued them over the noise: "It's all one. Fool!
We're all the same. Always were. Always."

Michael and the captain were outside by then and turned around to
listen.

"There's only one of us. One ..."

The rest of the sentence was drowned in a sudden outburst of
flaming timbers.

Now, the glass rectangle of the single window was darkening over
with smoke and grime. In a few minutes it would be impossible to see

MICHAEL STRONG— PART I 5

anything. Michael lurched over and peered in. Against the window he
could see Thomas' face plastered for an instant of fixed, grinning
agony. It was a horrible picture, a Bosch nightmare come alive.

Long, quickly lashing tongues of flame were licking at Thomas'
temples, neck, and hair. Through the hissing and crackling of the fire,
Michael could hear Thomas laughing, but very dimly, almost lost to
the ear. Between the flames he could see the shelves with their
gray-white load of corpses. Some were melting. Some were burning.
Eyes oozing out of sockets like broken eggs. Hair burning in little tufts.
First, fingers and toes and noses and ears, then whole limbs and torsos
melting and blackening. And the smell. God! That smell!

Then the fixity of Thomas' grin broke; his face seemed to be
replaced by another face with a similar grin. At the top speed of a
kaleidoscope, a long succession of faces came and went, one flickering
after the other. All grinning. All with "Cain's thumbprint on the chin,"
as Michael described the mark that haunted him for the rest of his life.
Every pair of lips was rounded into the grinning shape of Thomas' last
word: "one!" Faces and expressions Michael never had known. Some
he imagined he knew. Some he knew he imagined. Some he had seen
in history books, in paintings, in churches, in newspapers, in night-
mares. Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Korean, British, Slavic. Old,
young, bearded, clean-shaven. Black, white, yellow. Male, female.
Faster. Faster. All grinning with the same grin. More and more and
more. Michael felt himself hurtling down an unending lane of faces,
decades and centuries and millennia ticking by him, until the speed
slowed finally, and the last grinning face appeared, wreathed in hate,
its chin just one big thumbprint.

Now the window was completely black. Michael could see nothing.
"Cain . . ." he began to say weakly to himself. But a stablike
realization stopped the word in his throat, just as if someone had
hissed into his inner ear: "Wrong again, fool! Cain's father. I. The
cosmic Father of Lies and the cosmic Lord of Death. From the
beginning of the beginning. I ... I ... I ... I ... I .. ."

Michael felt a sharp pain in his chest. A strong hand was around his
heart stifling its movement, and an unbearable weight lay on his chest,
bending him over. He heard the blood thumping in his head and then
loud, roaring winds. A dazzling flash of light burst across his eyes. He
slumped to the ground.

Strong hands plucked Michael away from the window just in time.

D THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

The storehouse was now an inferno. With a tearing crash, the roof
caved in. The flames shot up triumphantly and licked the outside
walls, burning and consuming ravenously.

"Get the old man away from here!" screamed the captain through
the smoke and the smell. They all drew back. Michael, slung over the
shoulder of one man, was babbling and sobbing incoherently. The
captain could barely make his words out:

"I failed ... I failed ... I must go back. Please . . . Please . . .
must go back . . . not later . . . please . . ."

When they got Michael to the hospital, his condition was critical.
Apart from burns and smoke inhalation, he had suffered a minor heart
attack. And until the following evening, he continued in a delirium.

Before the fall of Nanking, he was smuggled out by the faithful
police captain and a few parishioners. They made their way north-
westwards, barely escaping the tightening Japanese net.

On December 14, the Japanese High Command let loose 50,000 of
their soldiers on the city with orders to kill every living person. The
city became a slaughterhouse. W r hole groups of men and women were
used for bayonet and machine-gun practice. Others were burned alive
or slowly cut to pieces. Rows of children were beheaded by
samurai-swinging officers competing to see who could take off the most
heads with one sweep of the sword. Women were raped by squads,
then killed. Fetuses were torn alive from wombs, carved up, and fed to
the dogs.

All told, over 42,000 were murdered. Death enveloped Nanking as it
had the entire Yangtze delta. Animals and crops died and rotted in the
fields.

It was as though the spirit that Michael had tangled with in the
microcosm of Thomas W r u's grisly charnel house in the suburbs of
Nanking — "the Cosmic Lord of Death" — had been let loose over all
the lands. In the world-shaking events of the war years, some special
viciousness had been given free rein, had impressed itself on hundreds
of thousands with the sting of absolute and irresistible authority.
Death was the strongest weapon. It settled all disputes over who was
master. And eventually it claimed all as its victims, putting everyone
on an equal level. In war, where death was the victor, you tried to
have it on your side.

Back in Hong Kong, where Michael was finally brought in the late

MICHAEL STRONG— PART I J

summer of 1938 after a considerably roundabout journey, the realists
knew it was a matter of time before the Japanese winners took all.

On Christmas Day 1941, Hong Kong became a Japanese possession.
During the years of occupation Michael lived quietly at Kowloon,
teaching a little in the schools, doing some pastoral work. He was slow
in recuperating.

During that time, everyone was under a strain. Food was scarce.
Harassment by the occupying Japanese was extreme. And all lived
with the sure knowledge that, barring miracles, if the Japanese had to
evacuate the city, they would massacre everyone; and if they stayed
on, they would eventually kill all they could not enslave.

Still, Michael took all the physical hardship with greater ease than
those around him. He suffered two more heart attacks during the
Japanese occupation, but they did not diminish his spirit in any way.
He did not feel, as his colleagues did, the intolerable uncertainty, the
strain of waiting for death at Japanese hands or for liberation by the
Allies. As some of his acquaintances noticed, his sufferings were not
chiefly in his body or his mind or his imagination. He had come from
the interior of China broken in a way neither rest nor food nor loving
attention could mend.

To the few who knew his story, it was clear that he had paid only
part of his price as an exorcist. He frankly told them of that price. And
of his failure. Both they and he realized he would have to liquidate his
debt sooner or later.

His waiting creditor fascinated Michael, was always on his mind.
For instance, toward the end of the Japanese occupation of Hong
Kong, he and a friend were watching a flight of American bombers
progress irnperturbably like enchanted birds through a rain of
Japanese antiaircraft fire. They deposited their bomb loads, and then
departed unharmed over the horizon. As the explosions and fires in the
harbor continued, Michael muttered: "Why does death make the
loudest noise and the brightest fire?"

Some weeks later, a man-made light brighter than the sun mush-
roomed over Hiroshima. A new human record: more people were
killed and maimed by this one human action than by any other ever
recorded in the story of man.

I was not to learn of Michael for some years — or of the special price
he paid day by day until his death, for his defeat in that strange
exorcism at Puh-Chi.

A Brief Handbook
of Exorcism

The recent vast publicity about Exorcism has highlighted the plight of
the possessed as a fresh genre of horror film. The essence of evil is lost
in the cinematographic effects. And the exorcist, who risks more than
anyone else in an exorcism, flits across the screen as necessary but, in
the end, not so interesting as the sound effects.

The truth is that all three — the possessed, the possessing spirit, and
the exorcist — bear a close relation to the reality of life and to its
meaning as all of us experience it each and every day.

Possession is not a process of magic. Spirit is real; in fact, spirit is the
basis of all reality. "Reality" would not only be boring without spirit; it
would have no meaning whatsoever. No horror film can begin to
capture the horror of such a vision: a world without spirit.

Evil Spirit is personal, and it is intelligent. It is preternatural, in the
sense that it is not of this material world, but it is in this material
world. And Evil Spirit as well as good advances along the lines of our
daily lives. In very normal ways spirit uses and influences our daily
thoughts, actions, and customs and, indeed, all the strands that make
up the fabric of life in whatever time or place. Contemporary life is no
exception.

To compare spirit with the elements of our lives and material world,
which it can and sometimes does manipulate for its own ends, is a fatal
mistake, but one that is very often made. Eerie sounds can be
produced by spirit — but spirit is not the eerie sound. Objects can be
made to fly across a room, but telekinesis is no more spirit than the

lO THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

material object that was made to move. One man whose story is told in
this book made the mistake of thinking otherwise, and he nearly paid
with his life when he had to confront the error he had made.

The exorcist is the centerpiece of every exorcism. On him depends
everything. He has nothing personal to gain. But in each exorcism he
risks literally everything that he values. Michael Strong's was an
extreme example of the fate awaiting the exorcist. But every exorcist
must engage in a one-to-one confrontation, personal and bitter, with
pure evil. Once engaged, the exorcism cannot be called off. There will
and must always be a victor and a vanquished. And no matter what
the outcome, the contact is in part fatal for the exorcist. He must
consent to a dreadful and irreparable pillage of his deepest self.
Something dies in him. Some part of his humanness will wither from
such close contact with the opposite of all humanness — the essence of
evil; and it is rarely if ever revitalized. No return will be made to him
for his loss.

This is the minimum price an exorcist pays. If he loses in the fight
with Evil Spirit, he has an added penalty. He may or may not ever
again perform the rite of Exorcism, but he must finally confront and
vanquish the evil spirit that repulsed him.

The investigation that may lead to Exorcism usually begins because
a man or woman — occasionally a child — is brought to the notice of
Church authorities by family or friends. Only rarely does a possessed
person come forward spontaneously.

The stories that are told on these occasions are dramatic and
painful: strange physical ailments in the possessed; marked mental
derangement; obvious repugnance to all signs, symbols, mention, and
sight of religious objects, places, people, ceremonies.

Often, the family or friends report, the presence of the person in
question is marked by so-called psychical phenomena: objects fly
around the room; wallpaper peels off the walls; furniture cracks;
crockery breaks; there are strange rumblings, hisses, and other noises
with no apparent source. Often the temperature in the room where
the possessed happens to be will drop dramatically. Even more often
an acrid and distinctive stench accompanies the person.

Violent physical transformations seem sometimes to make the lives
of the possessed a kind of hell on earth. Their normal processes of
secretion and elimination are saturated with inexplicable wrackings
and exaggeration. Their consciousness seems completely colored by

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 11

the violent sepia of revulsion. Reflexes sometimes become sporadic or
abnormal, sometimes disappear for a time. Breathing can cease for
extended periods. Heartbeats are hard to detect. The face is strangely
distorted, sometimes also abnormally tight and smooth without the
slightest line or furrow.

When such a case is brought to their attention, the first and central
problem that must always be addressed by the Church authorities is: Is
the person really possessed?

Henri Gesland, a French priest and exorcist who works today in
Paris, stated in 1974 that, out of 3,000 consultations since 1968, * 'there
have been only four cases of what I believe to be demonic possession/'
T. K. Osterreich, on the other hand, states that "possession has been
an extremely common phenomenon, cases of which abound in the
history of religion/' The truth is that official or scholarly census of
possession cases has never been made.

Certainly, many who claim to be possessed or whom others so
describe are merely the victims of some mental or physical disease. In
reading records from times when medical and psychological science
did not exist or were quite undeveloped, it is clear that grave mistakes
were made. A victim of disseminated sclerosis, for example, was taken
to be possessed because of his spastic jerkings and slidings and the
shocking agony in spinal column and joints. Until quite recently, the
victim of Tourette's syndrome was the perfect target for the accusa-
tion of "Possessed!": torrents of profanities and obscenities, grunts,
barks, curses, yelps, snorts, sniffs, tics, foot stomping, facial contortions
all appear suddenly and just as suddenly cease in the subject.
Nowadays, Tourette's syndrome responds to drug treatment, and it
seems to be a neurological disease involving a chemical abnormality in
the brain. Many people suffering from illnesses and diseases well
known to us today such as paranoia, Huntington's chorea, dyslexia,
Parkinson's disease, or even mere skin diseases (psoriasis, herpes I, for
instance), were treated as people "possessed" or at least as "touched"
by the Devil.

Nowadays, competent Church authorities always insist on thorough
examinations of the person brought to them for Exorcism, an
examination conducted by qualified medical doctors and psychiatrists.

When a case of possession is reported by a priest to the diocesan
authorities, the exorcist of the diocese is brought in. If there is no
diocesan exorcist, a man is appointed or brought from outside the
diocese.

12 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

Sometimes the priest reporting the exorcism will have had some
preliminary medical and psychiatric tests run beforehand in order to
allay the cautious skepticism he is likely to meet at the chancery when
he introduces his problem. When the official exorcist enters the case,
he will usually have his own very thorough examinations run by
experts he knows and whose judgment he is sure he can trust.

In earlier times, one priest was usually assigned the function of
exorcist in each diocese of the Church. In modern times, this practice
has fallen into abeyance in some dioceses, mainly because the
incidence of reported possession has decreased over the last hundred
years. But in most major dioceses, there is still one priest entrusted
with this function — even though he may rarely or never use it. In some
dioceses, there is a private arrangement between the bishop and one of
his priests whom he knows and trusts.

There is no official public appointment of exorcists. In some
dioceses, "the bishop knows little about it and wants to know less'' — as
in one of the cases recorded in this book. But however he comes to his
position, the exorcist must have official Church sanction, for he is
acting in an official capacity, and any power he has over Evil Spirit can
only come from those officials who belong to the substance of Jesus'
Church, whether they be in the Roman Catholic, the Eastern
Orthodox, or the Protestant Communions. Sometimes a diocesan priest
will take on an exorcism himself without asking his bishop, but all such
cases known to me have failed.

It is recognized both in the pre-exorcism examinations and during
the actual exorcism that there is usually no one physical or psychical
aberration or abnormality in the possessed person that we cannot
explain by a known or possible physical cause. And, apart from normal
medical and psychological tests, there are other possible sources for
diagnosis. However rickety and tentative the findings of parapsychol-
ogy, for example, one can possibly seek in its theories of telepathy and
telekinesis an explanation of some of the signs of possession. Sugges-
tion and suggestibility, as modern psychotherapists speak of them, can
account for many more.

Still, with the diagnoses and opinions of doctors and psychologists in
hand, it is often discovered there are wide margins of fluctuation.
Competent psychiatrists will differ violently among themselves; and in
psychology and medicine, ignorance of causes is often obscured by
technical names and jargon that are nothing more than descriptive
terms.

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 13

Nevertheless, the combined medical and psychological reports are
carefully evaluated and usually weigh heavily in the final judgment to
proceed or not with an exorcism. If according to those reports there is
a definite disease or illness which adequately accounts for the behavior
and symptoms of the subject, Exorcism is usually ruled out, or at least
delayed to allow a course of medical or psychiatric treatment.

But finally, reports in hand, all evidence in, Church authorities
judge the situation from another, special point of view, formed by their
own professional outlook.

They believe that there is an invisible power, a spirit of evil; that
this spirit can for obscure reasons take possession of a human being;
that the evil spirit can and must be expelled — exorcised — from the
person possessed; and that this exorcism can be done only in the name
and by the authority and power of Jesus of Nazareth. The testing from
the Church's viewpoint is as rigorous in its search as any medical or
psychological examination.

In the records of Christian Exorcism from as far back as the lifetime
of Jesus himself, a peculiar revulsion to symbols and truths of religion
is always and without exception a mark of the possessed person. In the
verification of a case of possession by Church authorities, this
"symptom" of revulsion is triangulated with other physical phenomena
frequently associated with possession — the inexplicable stench; freez-
ing temperature; telepathic powers about purely religious and moral
matters; a peculiarly unlined or completely smooth or stretched skin,
or unusual distortion of the face, or other physical and behavioral
transformations; "possessed gravity" (the possessed person becomes
physically immovable, or those around the possessed are weighted
down with a suffocating pressure); levitation (the possessed rises and
floats off the ground, chair, or bed; there is no physically traceable
support); violent smashing of furniture, constant opening and slam-
ming of doors, tearing of fabric in the vicinity of the possessed, without
a hand laid on them; and so on.

When this triangulation is made of the varied symptoms that may
occur in any given case, and medical and psychiatric diagnoses are
inadequate to cover the full situation, the decision will usually be to
proceed and try Exorcism.

There has never been, to my knowledge, an official listing of
exorcists together with their biographies and characteristics, so we
cannot satisfy our modern craving for a profile of, say, "the typical

14 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

exorcist." We can, however, give a fairly clear definition of the type of
man who is entrusted with the exorcism of a possessed person. Usually
he is engaged in the active ministry of parishes. Rarely is he a scholarly
tvpe engaged in teaching or research. Rarely is he a recently ordained
priest. If there is any median age for exorcists, it is probably between
the ages of fifty and sixty-five. Sound and robust physical health is not
a characteristic of exorcists, nor is proven intellectual brilliance,
postgraduate degrees, even in psychology or philosophy, or a very
sophisticated personal culture. In this writer's experience, the 15
exorcists he has known have been singularly lacking in anything like a
vivid imagination or a rich humanistic training. All have been sensitive
men of solid rather than dazzling minds. Though, of course, there are
many exceptions, the usual reasons for a priest's being chosen are his
qualities of moral judgment, personal behavior, and religious beliefs —
qualities that are not sophisticated or laboriously acquired, but that
somehow seem always to have been an easy and natural part of such a
man. Speaking religiously, these are qualities associated with special
grace.

There is no official training for an exorcist. Before a priest
undertakes Exorcism, it has been found advisable — but not always
possible or practical — for him to assist at exorcisms conducted by an
older and already experienced priest.

Once possession has been verified to the satisfaction of the exorcist,
he makes the rest of the decisions and takes care of all the necessary
preparations. In some dioceses, it is he who chooses the assistant
priest. The choice of the lay assistants and of the time and place of the
exorcism is left to him.

The place of the exorcism is usually the home of the possessed
person, for generally it is only relatives or closest friends who will give
care and love in the dreadful circumstances associated with possession.
The actual room chosen is most often one that has had some special
significance for the possessed person, not infrequently his or her own
bedroom or den. In this connection, one aspect of possession and of
spirit makes itself apparent: the close connection between spirit and
physical location. The puzzle of spirit and place makes itself felt in
many ways and runs throughout virtually every exorcism. There is a
theological explanation for it. But that there is some connection
between spirit and place must be dealt with as a fact.

Once chosen, the room where the exorcism will be done is cleared

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 15

as far as possible of anything that can be moved. During the exorcism,
one form of violence may and most often does cause any object, light
or heavy, to move about, rock back and forth, skitter or fly across the
room, make much noise, strike the priest or the possessed or the
assistants. It is not rare for people to emerge from an exorcism with
serious physical wounds. Carpets, rugs, pictures, curtains, tables,
chairs, boxes, trunks, bedclothes, bureaus, chandeliers, all are re-
moved.

Doors very often will bang open and shut uncontrollably; but
because exorcisms can go on for days, doors cannot be nailed or locked
with unusual security. On the other hand, the doorway must be
covered; otherwise, as experience shows, the physical force let loose
within the exorcism room will affect the immediate vicinity outside the
door.

Windows are closed securely; sometimes they may be boarded over
in order to keep flying objects from crashing through them and to
prevent more extreme accidents (possessed people sometimes attempt
defenestration; physical forces sometimes propel the assistants or the
exorcist toward the windows).

A bed or couch is usually left in the room (or placed there if
necessary), and that is where the possessed person is placed. A small
table is needed. On it are placed a crucifix, with one candle on either
side of it, holy water, and a prayer book. Sometimes there will also be
a relic of a saint or a picture that is considered to be especially holy or
significant for the possessed. In recent years in the United States, and
increasingly abroad as well, a tape recorder is used. It is placed on the
floor or in a drawer or sometimes, if it is not too cumbersome, around
the neck of an assistant.

The junior priest colleague of the exorcist is usually appointed by
diocesan authorities. He is there for his own training as an exorcist. He
will monitor the words and actions of the exorcist, warn him if he is
making a mistake, help him if he weakens physically, and replace him
if he dies, collapses, flees, is physically or emotionally battered beyond
endurance — and all have happened during exorcisms.

The other assistants are laymen. Very often a medical doctor will be
among them because of the danger to all present of strain, shock, or
injury. The number of lay assistants will depend on the exorcist's
expectation of violence. Four is the usual number. Of course, in
remote country areas or in very isolated Christian missions, and

l6 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

sometimes in big urban centers, there is no question of assistants.
There simply is none available, or there is no time to acquire any. The
exorcist must go it alone.

An exorcist comes to know from experience what he can expect by
way of violent behavior; and, for their own sakes, possessed people
must usually be physically restrained during parts of the exorcism. The
assistants therefore must be physically strong. In addition, there may
be a straitjacket on hand, though leather straps or rope are more
commonly used.

It is up to the exorcist to make sure that his assistants are not
consciously guilty of personal sins at the time of the exorcism, because
they, too, can expect to be attacked by the evil spirit, even though not
so directly or constantly as the exorcist himself. Any sin will be used as
a weapon.

The exorcist must be as certain as possible beforehand that his
assistants will not be weakened or overcome by obscene behavior or
by language foul beyond their imagining; they cannot blanch at blood,
excrement, urine; they must be able to take awful personal insults and
be prepared to have their darkest secrets screeched in public in front
of their companions. These are routine happenings during exorcisms.

Assistants are given three cardinal rules: they are to obey the
exorcist's commands immediately and without question, no matter
how absurd or unsympathetic those commands may appear to them to
be; they are not to take any initiative except on command; and they
are never to speak to the possessed person, even by way of
exclamation.

Even with all the care in the world, there is no way an exorcist can
completely prepare his assistants for what lies in store for them. Even
though they are not subject to the direct and unremitting attack the
priest will undergo, it is not uncommon for assistants to quit — or be
carried out — in the middle of an exorcism. A practiced exorcist will
even go so far as to make a few trial runs of an exorcism beforehand,
on the old theory that forewarned is forearmed — at least to some
degree.

Timing in an exorcism is generally dictated by circumstances. There
is usually a feeling of urgency to begin as soon as possible. Everyone
involved should have an open schedule. Rarely is an exorcism shorter
than some hours — more often than not ten or twelve hours. Sometimes
it stretches for two or three days. On occasion it lasts even for weeks.

Once begun, except on the rarest occasions, there are no time outs,

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 17

although one or other of the people present may leave the room for a
few moments, to take some food, to rest very briefly, or go to the
bathroom. (One strange exorcism where there was a time out is
described in this book. The priest involved would have preferred one
hundred times going straight through the exorcism rather than suffer
the mad violence that caused the delay.)

The only people in an exorcism who dress in a special way are the
exorcist and his priest assistant. Each wears a long black cassock that
covers him from neck to feet. Over it there is a waist-length white
surplice. A narrow purple stole is worn around the neck and hangs
loosely the length of the torso.

Normally, the priest assistant and the lay assistants prepare the
exorcism room according to the exorcist's instructions. They and the
exorcee are ready in the room when the exorcist enters, last and alone.

There is no lexicon of Exorcism; and there is no guidebook or set of
rules, no Baedeker of Evil Spirit to follow. The Church provides an
official text for Exorcism, but this is merely a framework. It can be
read out loud in 20 minutes. It merely provides a precise formula of
words together with certain prayers and ritual actions, so that the
exorcist has a preset structure in which to address the evil spirit. In
fact, the conduct of an exorcism is left very much up to the exorcist.

Nevertheless, any practiced exorcist I have spoken with agrees that
there is a general progress through recognizable stages in an exorcism,
however long it may last.

One of the most experienced exorcists I have known and who was in
fact the mentor of the exorcist in the first case related in this book,
gave names to the various general stages of an exorcism. These names
reflect the general meaning or effect or intent of what is happening,
but not the specific means used by the evil spirit or by the exorcist.
Conor, as I call him, spoke of Presence, Pretense, Breakpoint, Voice,
Clash, and Expubion. The events and stages these names signify occur
in nine out of every ten exorcisms.

From the moment the exorcist enters the room, a peculiar feeling
seems to hang in the very air. From that moment in any genuine
exorcism and onward through its duration, everyone in the room is
aware of some alien Presence. This indubitable sign of possession is as
unexplainable and unmistakable as it is inescapable. All the signs of
possession, however blatant or grotesque, however subtle or debat-
able, seem both to pale before and to be marshaled in the face of this
Presence.

l8 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

There is no sure physical trace of the Presence, but everyone feels it.
You have to experience it to know it; you cannot locate it spatially —
beside or above or within the possessed, or over in the corner or under
the bed or hovering in midair.

In one sense, the Presence is nowhere, and this magnifies the terror,
because there is a presence, an other present. Not a '"he" or a "she" or
an "it." Sometimes, you think that what is present is singular,
sometimes plural. When it speaks, as the exorcism goes on, it will
sometimes refer to itself as "I" and sometimes as "we," will use "my"
and "our."

Invisible and intangible, the Presence claws at the humanness of
those gathered in the room. You can exercise logic and expel any
mental image of it. You can say to yourself: "I am only imagining this.
Careful! Don't panic!" And there may be a momentary relief. But
then, after a time lag of bare seconds, the Presence returns as an
inaudible hiss in the brain, as a wordless threat to the self you are. Its
name and essence seem to be compounded of threat, to be only and
intensely baleful, concentratedly intent on hate for hate's sake and on
destruction for destruction's sake.

In the early stages of an exorcism, the evil spirit will make every
attempt to "hide behind" the possessed, so to speak — to appear to be
one and the same person and personality with its victim. This is the
Pretense.

The first task of the priest is to break that Pretense, to force the
spirit to reveal itself openly as separate from the possessed — and to
name itself, for all possessing spirits are called by a name that
generally (though not always) has to do with the way that spirit works
on its victim.

As the exorcist sets about his task, the evil spirit may remain silent
altogether; or it may speak with the voice of the possessed, and use
past experiences and recollections of the possessed. This is often done
skillfully, using details no one but the possessed could know. It can be
very disarming, even pitiful. It can make everyone, including the
priest, feel that it is the priest who is the villain, subjecting an innocent
person to terrible rigors. Even the mannerisms and characteristics of
the possessed are used by the spirit as its own camouflage.

Sometimes the exorcist cannot shatter the Pretense for days. But
until he does, he cannot bring matters to a head. If he fails to shatter it
at all, he has lost. Perhaps another exorcist replacing him will succeed.
But he himself has been beaten.

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM ig

Every exorcist learns during Pretense that he is dealing with some
force or power that is at times intensely cunning, sometimes supremely
intelligent, and at other times capable of crass stupidity (which makes
one wonder further about the problem of singular or plural); and it is
both highly dangerous and terribly vulnerable.

Oddly, while this spirit or power or force knows some of the most
secret and intimate details of the lives of everyone in the room, at the
same time it also displays gaps in knowledge of things that may be
happening at any given moment of the present.

But the priest must not be lulled by small victories or take chances
on hoped-for stupidities. He must be ready to have his own sins and
blunders and weaknesses put into his mind or shouted in ugliness for
all to hear. He must not make excuses for his past, or wither as even his
loveliest memories are fingered by ultimate filth and contempt; he
must not be sidetracked in any way from his primary intention of
freeing the possessed person before him. And he must at all costs avoid
trading abuse or getting into any logical arguments with the possessed.
The temptation to do so is more frequent than one might think, and
must be regarded as a potentially fatal trap that can shatter not only
the exorcism, but quite literally shatter the exorcist as well.

Accordingly, as the Pretense begins to break down, the behavior of
the possessed usually increases in violence and repulsiveness. It is as
though an invisible manhole opens, and out of it pours the unmention-
ably inhuman and the humanly unacceptable. There is a stream of filth
and unrestrained abuse, accompanied often by physical violence,
writhing, gnashing of teeth, jumping around, sometimes physical
attacks on the exorcist.

A new hallmark of the proceedings enters as the Breakpoint nears,
and ushers in one of the more subtle sufferings the exorcist must
undergo: confusion. Complete and dreadful confusion. Rare is the
exorcist who does not falter here for at least a moment, enmeshed in
the peculiar pain of apparent contradiction of all sense.

His ears seem to smell foul words. His eyes seem to hear offensive
sounds and obscene screams. His nose seems to taste a high-decibel
cacophony. Each sense seems to be recording what another sense
should be recording. Each nerve and sinew of onlookers and
participants becomes rigid as they strive for control. Panic — the fear of
being dissolved into insanity — inns in quick jabs through everyone
there. All present experience this increasingly violent and confusing

20 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

assault. But the exorcist is the one who rides the storm. He is the direct
target of it all.

The Breakpoint is reached at that moment when the Pretense has
finally collapsed altogether. The voice of the possessed is no longer
used by the spirit, though the new, strange voice may or may not issue
from the mouth of the victim. In Thomas Wu's case, the alien voice
did come from the possessed 's mouth; and that was why the police
captain was so startled. The sound produced is often not even
remotely like any human sound.

At the Breakpoint, for the first time, the spirit speaks of the
possessed in the third person, as a separate being. For the first time,
the possessing spirit acts personally and speaks of "I" or "we," usually
interchangeably, and of "my" and "our" or "mine" and "ours."

Another very frequent sign that the Breakpoint has been reached is
the appearance of what Father Conor called the Voice.

The Voice is an inordinately disturbing and humanly distressing
babel. The first few syllables seem to be those of some word
pronounced slowly and thickly — somewhat like a tape recording
played at a subnormal speed. You are just straining to pick up the
word and a layer of cold fear has already gripped you — you know this
sound is alien. But your concentration is shattered and frustrated by an
immediate gamut of echoes, of tiny, prickly voices echoing each
syllable, screaming it, whispering it, laughing it, sneering it, groaning
it, following it. They all hit your ear, while the alien voice is going on
unhurriedly to the next syllable, which you then try to catch, while
guessing at the first one you lost. By then, the tiny, jabbing voices have
caught up with that second syllable; and the voice has proceeded to
the third syllable; and so on.

If the exorcism is to proceed, the Voice must be silenced. It takes an
enormous effort of will on the part of the exorcist, in direct
confrontation with the alien will of evil, to silence the Voice. The
priest must get himself under control and challenge the spirit first to
silence and then to identify itself intelligibly.

As in all things to do with Exorcism of Evil Spirit, the priest makes
this challenge with his own will, but always in the name and by the
authority of Jesus and his Church. To do so in his own name or by
some fancied authority of his own would be to invite personal disaster.
Merely human power unadorned and without aid cannot cope with
the preternatural. (It is to be remembered that when we speak of the

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 21

preternatural, we are not speaking about what are known as polter-
geists.)

Usually, at this point and as the Voice dies out, a tremendous
pressure of an obscure kind affects the exorcist. This is the first and
outermost edge of a direct and personal collision with the "will of the
Kingdom," the Clash.

We all know from our personal experience that there can be no
struggle of single personal wills without that felt and intuitive contact
between two persons. There is a two-way communication that is as
real as a conversation using words. The Clash is the heart of a special
and dreadful communication, the nucleus of this singular battle of
wills between exorcist and Evil Spirit.

Painful as it will be for him, the priest must look for the Clash. He
must provoke it. If he cannot lock wills with the evil thing and force
that thing to lock its will in opposition to his own, then again the
exorcist is defeated.

The issue between the two, the exorcist and the possessing spirit, is
simple. Will the totally antihuman invade and take over? Will it,
noisome and merciless, seep over that narrow rim where the exorcist
would hold his ground alone, and engulf him? Or will it, unwillingly,
protestingly, under a duress greater than its single-track will, stop,
identify itself, cede, retire, disappear, and be volatilized back into an
unknown pit of being where no man wants to go ever?

Even with all the pressure on him, and in fullest human agony, if the
exorcist has got this far, he must press home. He has gained an
advantage. He has already forced the evil spirit to come out on its
own. If he has not been able to until now, he must finally force it to
give its name. And then, some exorcists feel, the exorcist must pursue
for as much information as he can. For in some peculiar way, as
exorcists find, the more an evil spirit can be forced to reveal in the
Clash and its aftermath, the surer and easier will be the Expulsion
when that moment comes. To force as complete an identification as
possible is perhaps a mark of domination of one will over another.

It is of crucial interest to speculate about the violence provoked by
Exorcism — the physical and mental struggles that are so extreme they
can bring on death. Why would spirit battle so? Why not leave and
waft off invisibly to someone or someplace else? For spirit itself seems
to suffer in these battles.

Time and again, in exorcism after exorcism, there occurs that

22 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

curious thing to do with spirit and place, the strange puzzle mentioned
previously in connection with the room chosen for the exorcism. When
Jesus expelled the unclean spirits, those spirits showed concern for
where they might go. In record after record, as well as in several
exorcisms recounted in this book, the possessing spirits wail in lament
and questioning pain: "Where shall we go?" "We too have to possess
our habitation." "Even the Anointed One gave us a place with the
swine." "Here . . . we can't stay here any longer."

Evil Spirit, having found a home with a consenting host, does not
appear to give up its place easily. It claws and fights and deceives and
even risks killing its host before it will be expelled. How violent the
struggle probably depends on many things; the intelligence of the
spirit being dealt with and the degree of possession achieved over
the victim are perhaps two one could speculate about.

Whatever determines the actual pitch of violence, once the exorcist
has forced the invading spirit to identify itself, and sustained the first
wordless bout of the Clash, and then invoked its formal condemnation
and expulsion by the Exorcism rite, the immediate result is generally a
struggle tortuous beyond imagining, an open violence that leaves all
subtlety behind.

The person possessed is by now obviously aware in one way or
another of what possessed him. Frequently he becomes a true
battleground for much of the remainder of the exorcism, enduring
unbelievable punishment and strain.

It is sometimes possible for the exorcist to appeal directly to the
possessed person, urging him to use some part of his own will still free
of the spirit's influence and control, and engage directly in the fight,
aiding the exorcist. And at such moments no animal pinned helplessly
to the ground struggles more pathetically against the drinking of its
life's blood by a voracious and superior cruelty. The very nauseous
character of the possessed person's appearance and behavior appears
to be a sign of his desire for deliverance, a desperate sign of struggle,
evidence of a revolt where once he had consented.

Increasingly what had possessed him is being forced into the open,
all the while protesting its victim's revolt and its own expulsion. The
violence of the contortions and the physical disfigurement of the
possessed can reach a degree one would think he could not possibly
withstand.

The exorcist, too, comes in for full attack now. Once cornered, the
evil spirit seems able to call on a superior intelligence, and will try to

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 23

lure the exorcist on to a field boobytrapped and mined with situations
from which no human can extricate himself.

Any weakness in the religious faith that alone sustains the exorcist or
any fatigue will allow the exorcists mind to be flooded with a terrible
light he cannot fend off — a light that can burn the very roots of his
reason and turn him emotionally into the most servile of slaves
desperate to be liberated from all bodily life.

These are only some of the dangers and traps that face every
exorcist. His pain is physical, emotional, mental. He has to deal with
what is eerie but not enthralling; with something askew, but intelli-
gently so; with a quality that is upside down and inside out, but
significantly so. The mordant traits of nightmare are there in full
regalia, but this is no dream and permits him no thankful remission.

He is attacked by a stench so powerful that many exorcists start
vomiting uncontrollably. He is made to bear physical pain, and he feels
anguish over his very soul. He is made to know he is touching the
completely unclean, the totally unhuman.

All sense may suddenly seem nonsense. Hopelessness is confirmed as
the only hope. Death and cruelty and contempt are normal. Anything
comely or beautiful is an illusion. Nothing, it seems, was ever right in
the world of man. He is in an atmosphere more bizarre than Bedlam.

If, in spite of his emotions and his imagination and his body — all
trapped at once in pain and anguish — if, in spite of all this, the will of
the exorcist holds in the Clash, what he does is to approach his final
function in this situation as an authorized human witness for Jesus. By
no power of his, on account of no privilege of his own, he calls finally
on the evil spirit to desist, to be dispossessed, to depart and to leave
the possessed person.

And, if the exorcism is successful, this is what happens. The
possession ends. All present become aware of a change around them.
The sense of Presence is totally, suddenly absent. Sometimes there are
receding voices or other noises, sometimes only dead silence. Some-
times the recently possessed may be at the end of his strength;
sometimes he will wake up as from a dream, a nightmare, or a coma.
Sometimes the former victim will remember much of what he has
been through; sometimes he will remember nothing at all.

Not so for the exorcists, during and after their grisly work. They
carry nagging doubts and bitter conflicts untellable to family, friend,
superior, or therapist. Their personal traumas lie beyond the reach of
soothing words and deeper than the sweep of any consoling thoughts.

24 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

They share their punishment with none but God. Even that has its
peculiar sting of difficulty. For it is a sharing by faith and not by
face-to-face communication.

But only thus do these men, seemingly ordinary and commonplace
in their lives, persevere through the days of quiet horror and the nights
of sleepless watching they spend for years after as their price of
success, and as abiding reminders that, once upon a time, another
human being was made whole, because they willingly incurred the
direct displeasure of living hatred.

The following five case histories are true. The lives of the people
involved are told on the basis of extensive interviews with all of the
principals involved, with many of their friends and relatives, and with
many others involved directly or indirectly in minor ways. All
interviews have been independently checked for factual accuracy
wherever possible. The exorcisms themselves are reproduced from the
actual tapes made at the time and from the transcripts of those tapes.
The exorcisms have necessarily been cut for reasons of length; all of
the exorcisms recorded here lasted more than 12 hours.

I have chosen these five cases from among a greater number known
and available to me because, both singly and taken together, they are
dramatic illustrations of the way in which personal and intelligent evil
moves cunningly along the lines of contemporary fads and interests,
and within the usual bounds of experience of ordinary men and
women. No fourteenth- or fifteenth- or sixteenth-century case, for all
its possible romantic appeal, would have any relevancy for us today.
On the contrary, it would remain a simple matter for us to dismiss such
cases as fables made up to suit the fears or fancies of "more ignorant"
people of "less sophisticated" times.

Each case presented here includes as an important element some
basic attitude or attitudes popular in our own society. In the possessed
person, it is pushed to a narrow and frightening extreme.

In the first case, 7Ao 's Friend and the Smiler, the insistence is that
there is no essential difference between good and evil, and ultimately
no difference between being and nonbeing; that all values are subject
only to one's personal preferences.

In Father Bones and Mister Natch, the compelling idea that was
seized by Evil Spirit seemed to be that all mysteries can and are
resolved in "natural" (i.e., rational or scientific or quantifiable)
explanations; that there can be no relevance for the modern person in

A BRIEF HANDBOOK OF EXORCISM 25

anything that cannot be rationally understood; and that there can be
no truth important to man beyond what is rational.

In The Virgin and the Girl-Fixer, the battle concerned some of the
great, deep, and mysterious "givens" of our very nature and our
society — in this case, gender and human love. The priest in this case
said to me a few months before he died, in one of the most profound
conversations of my life: "A bird doesn't fly because it has wings. It
has wings because it flies." We will ignore that mysterious truth in its
applications to our sexuality and our gender only at our great peril, I
believe.

In Uncle Ponto and the Mushroom-Souper, we have an example of
what may be happening to many in our modern society — without their
realizing it and without those around them taking cognizance of it. For
it seems that there is an individualism, a purely personalistic interpre-
tation of human life abroad today, which exceeds by far the bounds of
what used to be known as selfishness and egotism. It has produced in
thousands of people an aberrant and idiosyncratic behavior which is
truly destructive.

In The Rooster and the Tortoise, the fatal confusion (and in this case
it was literally almost fatal) was between spirit and psyche; between
those parts and attributes of ours that are quantifiable, and yet through
which spirit most easily makes itself known. If everything we have
taken to be of spirit can be made to seem a product merely of the
human psyche, with no meaning or significance beyond its factualness,
then love can be made to seem only a chemical interaction, and love's
paradigm is killed.

In each case, one basic note of possession is confusion. Sex is
confused with gender. Spirit is confused with psyche. Moral value is
confused with absence of any value. Mystery is confused with untruth.
And, in every case, rational argument is used, not to clarify, but as a
trap, to foster confusion and to nurture it as a major weapon against
the exorcist. Confusion, it would seem, is a prime weapon of evil.

There is much more to be observed and said about the meaning of
possession. Not everything can be covered in a single volume. But
possession and Exorcism are not themselves mere fads with no interest
beyond the bizarre and significantly frightening. They are tangible
expressions of the reality which envelops the daily lives of ordinary
people. No study of possession and Exorcism cases within the
Christian optic would be adequate without a minimum of explanation
— from the Christian point of view — about that reality: what takes

26 THE FATE OF AN EXORCIST

place in possession, and how that degrading process develops in a
particular individual. Such an explanation occupies the final section of
this book.

This study makes no attempt to answer the ultimate puzzle of
possession: why this person rather than that person becomes the object
of diabolic attack which can end in partial or perfect possession. The
answer certainly does not lie in psychological probings, in heredity, or
in social phenomena. A final answer will include, as prime ingredients,
the personal free choice which each individual makes and the mystery
of human predestination. About free choice we know the essentials: I
can choose evil for no other reason or motive than that I choose evil.
Some apparently do. About predestination we know little or nothing.
The puzzle remains.

All of the men and women involved in the five cases reported here
are known to me personally; they have given their fullest cooperation
on the condition that their identities and those of their families and
friends not be revealed. Therefore, all names and places have been
changed, and other possible pointers to identity have been obscured.
Any similarity between the cases reported here and any others that
may have occurred is unintentional and purely coincidental.

The
Cases

Zio's Friend
and the Smiler

Peter took one more breath of fresh air. He was reluctant to pull the
open window shut against the uproar on 125th Street 15 stories below.
It was the first time in history that a Roman Pope was driving through
New York streets, and the very air was alive with excitement. The
Pope's motorcade had already passed over Willis Avenue Bridge into
the Bronx on its way to Yankee Stadium. The crowds were still milling
around. Some nuns scurried about like frenzied penguins blowing
whistles and marshaling lines of white-clad schoolgirls. Hot-dog
vendors shouted their prices. A dowdily dressed young woman and her
child peddled plastic little popes to passersby. Two policemen were
removing wooden barriers. A garbage truck snorted and honked its
way through the traffic. Father Peter closed the window finally, drew
the curtains together, and turned back toward the bed.

The room was quiet again, except for the irregular breathing of
twenty-six-year-old Marianne. She lay on a gray blanket thrown over
the bare mattress. With her faded jeans, yellow body-shirt, auburn hair
straggling over her forehead, the pallor of her cheeks, and the aging,
off-white color of the walls around her, she seemed part of a tragically
washed-out pastel. Except for a funny twist to her mouth, her face had
no expression.

To Peter's left, with their backs to the door, stood two bulky men.
One: an ex-policeman and a friend of the family, a veteran of 32 years
on the force, where, he thought, he had seen everything. He was about
to find out that he hadn't. Sixtyish, balding, clad in dungarees, his arms

30 THE CASES

folded over his chest, his face was a picture of puzzlement. The other:
the closest acquaintance of Marianne's father, whom the children
called uncle, was a bank manager and a grandfather in his midfifties,
red-faced and jowled, in a blue suit, his arms hanging by his sides, eyes
fixed on Marianne's face with an expression of helpless fear. Both these
men, athletic and muscular, had been asked to assist at the exorcism of
Marianne K., to quell any physical violence or harm she might
attempt. Marianne's father, a wispy man with reddened eyes and
drawn face, stood with the family doctor. He was praying silently.
Peter always insisted on having a member of the family present at an
exorcism. As if in contrast to the others, the young doctor, a
psychiatrist, wore a concentrated, almost studious look as he checked
the girl's pulse.

Peter's colleague, Father James, a priest in his thirties, stood at the
foot of the bed. Black-haired, full-faced, youthful, apprehensive, his
black, white, and purple robes were a uniform for him. On Peter, with
his tousled gray hair and hollow-cheeked look, the same colors melted
into a veiled unity. James was dressed up ready to go. Peter, the
campaigner, had been there.

On a night table beside James two candles flickered. A crucifix
rested between them. In one corner of the room there was a chest of
drawers. "Should have had it removed before we started," Peter
thought. The chest, originally left there in order to hold a tape
recorder, had become quite a nuisance. Probably would continue to be
until the whole business was finished, Peter thought. But he knew
better than to fiddle with any object in the room, once the exorcism
had begun.

It was a Monday, 8:15 p.m., the seventeenth hour into Peter's third
exorcism in thirty years. It was also his last exorcism, although he
could not know that. Peter felt sure that he had arrived at the
Breakpoint in the rite.

In the few seconds it took him to cross from the window to her bed,
Marianne's face had been contorting into a mass of crisscrossing lines.
Her mouth twisted further and further in an S-shape. The neck was
taut, showing every vein and artery; and her Adam's apple looked like
a knot in a rope.

The ex-policeman and her uncle moved to hold her. But her voice
threw them back momentarily like a whiplash:

"You dried-up fuckers! You've messed with each other's wives. And

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 31

with your own peenies into the bargain. Keep your horny paws off
me/'

"Hold her down!" Peter spoke peremptorily. Four pairs of hands
clamped on her. "Jesus have mercy on my baby," muttered her father.
The ex-policeman's eyes bulged.

"YOU!" Marianne screamed, as she lay pinned flat on the bed, her
eyes open and blazing with anger, "YOU! Peter the Eater. Eat my
flesh, said she. Suck my blood, said she. And you did! Peter the Eater!
You'll come with us, you freak. You'll lick my arse and like it,
Peeeeeeeeetrrrrrr," and her voice sank through the "rrrr" to an animal
gurgle.

Something started to ache in Peter's brain. He missed a breath,
panicked because he could not draw it, stopped and waited, swaying
on his feet. Then he exhaled gratefully. To the younger priest he
looked frail and vulnerable. Father James handed Peter his prayer
book, and they both turned to face Marianne.

PETER

Almost a year later, in 1966, on the day Peter was buried in Calvary
Cemetery, his younger colleague, Father James, chatted with me after
the funeral service. "It doesn't matter what the doctor said" (the
official report gave coronary thrombosis as cause of death), "he was
gone, really gone, after that last to-do. Just a matter of time. Mind you,
it wasn't that he wasn't brave and devoted. He was a real man of God
before and after the whole thing. But it took that last exorcism to make
him realize that life knocks the stuffing out of any decent man." Peter
had apparently never emerged from a gentle reverie after the exorcism
of Marianne; and he always spoke as if he were talking for the benefit
of someone else present. It was as exasperating as listening to one
side of a telephone conversation.

"He was never the same again," said James. "Some part of him
passed into the Great Beyond during the final Clash, as you call it."
Then, after a pause and musingly, almost to himself: "Can you beat
that? He had to be born in Lisdoonvarna* sixty-two years ago, be
reared beside Killarney, and come all the way over here three
times — just to find out the third time where he was supposed to die;

A town in County Clare, Ireland.

32 THE CASES

and how, and when. Makes you think what life's all about. You never
know how it's going to end. Peter did not become an American citizen,
even. All that travel. Just to die as the Lord had decided."

Peter was one of seven children, all boys. His father moved from
County Clare to Listowel, County Kerry, where he prospered as a
wine merchant. The family lived in a large two-story house overlook-
ing the river Feale. They were financially comfortable and respected.
Their Roman Catholicism was that brand of muscular Christianity
which the Irish out of all Western nations had originated as their
contribution to religion.

Peter spent his youth in the comparative peace of "the old British
days" before the Irish Republican Brotherhood (parent of the IRA),
the Irish Volunteers, and the 1916 Rebellion started modern Ireland
off on the stormy course of fighting for the "terrible beauty" that lured
Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Eamonn De Valera, and the other
leaders into the deathtrap of bloodletting, where, 50 years later, in
Peter's declining years, blood was still being shed.

School filled three-quarters of the year for Peter. Summers were
spent at Beal Strand, at Ballybunion seaside, or harvesting on his
grandfather's farm at Newtownsands.

One such summer, his sixteenth, Peter had his only brush with sex.
He had lain for hours among the sand dunes of Beal Strand with Mae,
a girl from Listowel whom he had known for about three years. That
day, their families had gone to the Listowel races.

Innocent flirting developed into simple love play and finally into a
fervid exchange of kisses and caresses, until they both lay naked and
awesomely happy beneath the early-evening stars, the warmth undu-
lating and glowing sweetly through their bodies as they huddled close
together. Afterward, Mae playfully nicknamed him "Peter the Eater."
To calm his fear she added: "Don't worry. No one will know how you
made love to me. Only me,"

For about a year afterward, he was interested in girls and
particularly in Mae. Then early in his eighteenth year, he began to
think of the priesthood. By the time he finished schooling, his mind
was made up. Peter had told me once: "When we said goodbye, that
summer of 1922, Mae teased me: If you ever leave the seminary and
don't marry me, I'll tell everyone your nickname.' She never told a
human soul. But, of course, they knew." Peter's sole but real enemies
were the shadowy dwellers of "the Kingdom" whom he vaguely called

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 33

"they." He gave me a characteristic look and stared away over my
head. Mae had died in 1929 of a ruptured appendix.

Peter started his studies at Killarney Seminary and finished them at
Numgret with the Jesuits. He was no brilliant scholar, but got very
good grades in Canon Law and Hebrew, which he pronounced with an
Irish brogue ("My grandfather was from one of the Lost Tribes"),
acquired a reputation for good, sound judgment in moral dilemmas,
and was renowned locally because with one deft kick of a football he
could knock the pipe out of a smoker's mouth at 30 yards and not even
graze the man's face.

Ordained priest at twenty-five, he worked for six years in Kerry.
Then he did a first stint in a New York parish for three years. He was
present twice at exorcisms as an assistant. On a third occasion, when
he was present merely as an extra help, he had to take over from the
exorcist, an older man, who collapsed and died of a heart attack during
the rite.

Two weeks before he sailed home to Ireland for his first holiday in
three years, the authorities assigned him his first exorcism. "You're
young, Father. I wish you'd had more experience," was the way he
recalled the bishop's instructions, "but the Old Fella won't have much
on you or over you. So go to it."

It had lasted 13 hours ("In Hoboken, of all places," he used to say
whimsically), and had left him dazed and ill at ease. He never forgot
the statement of murderous intent hurled at him by the man he had
exorcised. Through foaming spittle and clenched teeth and the smell
of a body unwashed for two years prior, the man had snarled: "You
destroy the Kingdom in me, you shit-faced alien Irish pig. And you
think you're escaping. Don't worry. You'll be back for more. And
more. Your kind always come back for more. And we will scorch the
soul in you. Scorch it. You'll smell. Just like us! Third strike and you're
out! Pig! Remember us!" Peter remembered.

But a two-week vacation in County Clare restored him to his energy
and verve. "God! The scones running with salty butter, and the hot
tea, and the Limerick bacon, and the soft rain, and the peace of it all!
'Twas great."

Most of Peter's wounds were not inflicted by the harsh realities of
the world around him; but, deep within him, they opened as his way of
responding to the evil he sometimes sensed in daily life.

Those who still remembered him in 1972 agreed that Peter had
been neither genius nor saint. Black-haired, blue-eyed, raw-boned in

34 THE CASES

appearance, he was a man of little imagination, deep loyalties, loud
laughter, gargantuan appetite for bacon and potatoes, an iron
constitution, an inability to hate or bear a grudge, and in a state of
constant difference of opinion with his bishop (a tiny old man
familiarly called "Packy" by his priests). Peter was somewhat lazy,
harmlessly vain about his 6' z" height, and a lifelong addict of Edgar
Wallace detective stories,

"He had this distinct quality," remarked one of his friends. "You felt
he had a huge spirit laced with cast-iron common sense and untouched
by any pettiness."

"If he met the Devil at the top of the stairs one morning and saw
Jesus Christ standing at the bottom," added another, "he wouldn't
turn his back on the one in his hurry to get down to the other. He'd
back down. Just to be sure."

In normal circumstances, Peter would have stayed on permanently
in Ireland after his vacation of scones and soft rain. He would have
worked in parishes for some years, then acquired a parish of his own.
But there was something else tugging at his heart and something else
written in his stars. When he left for New York at the outbreak of the
Korean War in order to replace a chaplain who had been called up, he
recalled the exorcism in Hoboken. "Third strike and you're out! Pig!
Remember!"

He remarked jokingly to a worried friend who knew the whole
story: " Tis not the third time vet!"

In January 1952, he was asked to do his second exorcism. His
effectiveness in the first exorcism and the resilient way he had taken it
recommended him to the authorities. The exorcism took place in
Jersey City. And, in spite of its length (the better part of three days
and three nights), it took very little out of him physically or mentally.
Spiritually, it had some peculiar significance for him.

"It was a sort of warmer-upper for the 1965 outing," he told me in
1966. "The ceremony lasted too long for my liking, was hammer and
tongs all the way, almost beat us. But there was no great strain inside
here [pointing to his chest]." And he added with a significance that
eluded me then: "Jesus had a forerunner in the Baptist. I suppose
darkness has its own."

Looking back on his role as exorcist today, it is clear to me that the
first two exorcisms prepared him for the third and last one. They were
three rounds with the same enemy.

The exorcee that January was a sixteen-year-old boy of Hispanic

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 35

origin who had been treated for epilepsy over a period of years, only to
be finally declared nonepileptic and physically sound as a bell by a
team of doctors from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Nevertheless,
on the boy's return home, all the dreadful disturbances started all over
again in a much more emphasized way, so the parents turned to their
priest.

"They tell me you've a ... eh ... a sort of a way with the Devil,
Father," said the wheezy, red-faced monsignor, grinning awkwardly as
he gave the necessary permissions and instructions to Peter. Then,
stirring in his chair, he added grimly as a bad Catholic joke: "But don't
bring him back here to the Chancery with you. Get rid of him or it or
her or whatever the devil it is. We have enough of all that on our backs
here already."

It had gone well. The boy became Peter's devoted friend. Later he
went to Vietnam and died in an ambush late one night outside Saigon.
His commanding officer wrote, enclosing an envelope with Peter's
name on it which the dead man had left behind. It contained a piece
of bloodstained linen and a short note. Over a decade previously, just
before his release from possession, in a final paroxysm of revolt and
appeal, he had clawed at Peter's wrist, and Peter's blood had fallen on
his shirt sleeve. "I kept this as a sign of my salvation, Father," the note
said. "Pray for me. I will remember you, when I am with Jesus."

Peter was then forty-eight years old and in his prime as a priest. Yet
in himself, he suffered from a growing sense of inadequacy and
worthlessness. He felt that, in comparison with many of his colleagues
who had attained degrees, qualifications, high offices, and acknowl-
edged expertise, he had very little to show by way of achievement. "I
have no riches inside me," he wrote to a brother of his, "just black
poverty. Sometimes it darkens my soul." When his turn for a parish of
his own came around, he was passed over. (Packy was dead already;
but, some said, the dead bishop had made sure in his records that
Peter would be passed over.)

Peter, in fact, was a maverick. The normal priest found him inferior
in social graces but superior in judgment, lacking in ecclesiastical
know-how and ambition but very content with his work. Sometimes
his protestations of being "poor inside," of having "no excellent
talents" sounded hollow when matched with his stubborn and
opinionated attitudes. Anyway, the normal bishop would take one look
into his direct gaze and decide that his own authority was somehow at
stake. For Peter's stare was not insolent, but yet unwavering; it

36 THE CASES

acknowledged the demands of worth but was devoid of any subser-
vience. It said: "I respect you for what you represent. What you are is
something else." Such a man was unsettling for the absolutist mind
and threatening for the authoritarian bent of most ecclesiastics.

Beyond the occasional funny remark, such as "The higher they go,
the blacker their bottoms look," Peter gave no outward impression of
discontent or anxiety. A lack of self-confidence saved him from revolt
or disgust. And he bore it all lightly. "Well, Father Peter," one bishop
joshed him as he left to do a three-month stint in London parish work,
"off you go to hell or to glory, eh?" Peter laughed it off: "In either
case, bishops get the priority, my lord."

Had he raised protests and used the influential friends at his
disposal, he would doubtless have retired in good time to the rural
repose of a peaceful Kerry parish and the extraordinary autonomy of a
parish priest. (A pope or a bishop approached any settled "P.P." with
care. Only his housekeeper could make a frontal assault on a parish
priest's autonomy. But, then again, Irish housekeepers were a race
unto themselves.)

As Peter was and as he chose to remain — in strict dependence on
ecclesiastical whims and never striking out to seek a fixed position — he
was available to be tapped for a temporary visit to Rome and an
accidental meeting that changed him profoundly.

After his second exorcism, there were ten more years of "helping
out" in various dioceses, practically always on a temporary basis as
substitute for other priests. And then a chance breakfast in late
September 1962 brought him together with a West Coast bishop who,
on his way to the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome,
stayed a few days in New York. The bishop was well known for his
sympathy with mavericks and his welcome for "hard cases." Like all
the bishops who went to the council, he needed one or two experts in
theology to be his advisors in Rome. He needed, in particular, a
theologian counselor skilled in pastoral matters.

The next day Peter was aboard a TWA flight with the bishop
enroute to the Eternal City. But for that trip, he probably would not
have been at the side of Marianne three years later. And he certainly
would never have come close to two men who had a sudden, deep
influence on the rest of his life. In Rome, Peter performed his duties as
a counselor during his ten- week stay there. But what mattered much
more to him personally and affected him deeply were his experiences
with Father Conor and with Paul VI, then Monsignor Montini.

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SM1LER 37

Father Conor was a diminutive Irish Franciscan friar, bald-headed,
sharp-eyed, and voluble, who taught theology at a Roman university.
He wore rimless glasses, trotted and never walked, and spoke with a
very strong brogue which made his Latin lectures all but unintelligible.

He held court for students, professors, foreign visitors, officials, and
friends in his monastery room after siesta hour, three or four days a
week. There, any bit of gossip in Rome could be learned, tested, and
assessed for its rumor value. For half of Rome always feeds on rumors
about the other half. And speculation is the stick which continually
stirs the pool of rumor. "They till me, me frind, that . . ." was a
frequent opening of Conor's conversation.

Conor spent his summers fishing around Lough Corrib, Ireland, was
an expert on Waterford glass, and had a lifelong fascination for all
politics, civil and ecclesiastical, a fascination that made Vatican
Council II appeal to Conor as catnip to a cat. He had studied
demonology ("Mostly ballyhoo," he pronounced in his thick brogue),
witchcraft ("A lotta junk, if y'ask me"), Exorcism ("A mad bizniz"),
and possession ("The divil's toe-rag"). He served as a consultant to one
Roman office that dealt with cases of possession; and on 14 occasions
he had conducted exorcisms (but always protested that he "wouldn't
touch wan wid a barge pole, unliss they ordherd me teh"). According
to an in joke about Conor that always made him furious, he induced
devils to leave the possessed by threatening to "send them back to
Ireland."

Outside Roman clerical circles, Conor's activity as an exorcist was
relatively unknown. Indeed, he was regarded by his fellow clergy in
Ireland as a bookworm and by his lay friends as a "grand, simple,
innocent man, slightly dotty about the Middle Ages."

Peter and Conor were approximately the same age. They shared a
love of Ireland and a passion for Rome's ruins. And Conor sensed in
Peter a mind never tarnished by the baser ambitions he saw eating into
those whd gyrated and jockeyed around him in Rome on the political
treadmill. He also felt Peter's sense of his own worthlessness.

He found Peter's exorcism experiences enormously interesting. For
Peter had "the touch," he used to say — a natural ability to weather
exorcism's storms. On the other hand, Peter found in Conor a friend of
practical experience and advice. Rambling in the Roman suburbs,
sitting in the cortile of Conor's monastery, visiting the sights of Rome,
sipping coffee in the Piazza Navona, they gradually assumed the roles
of master and disciple. Peter put questions; Conor answered them. He

38 THE CASES

explained. He theorized. He instructed. He warned. He corrected. He
encouraged.

In the area of Exorcism, Conor had things reduced to a recognizable
pattern of behavior: how the possessed behaved; how the possessing
spirit acted; and how the exorcist should react and conduct the
exorcism. During the long walks and talks with Conor, Peter
crystallized his own first impressions and learned some valuable
guidelines.

He had never realized the radical distinction between the perfectly
possessed and the revolters. Nor had he understood the revolters as
victims of possession who, partly with their own connivance, surely,
had become hostage and were now trying, on the one hand, to give
some sign, to summon help, but who in that struggle also became
victims of a violent protest against such help — a protest made by the
evil thing that possessed them.

Peter was able to adjust and correct his techniques immediately,
even without conducting further exorcisms, once Conor explained that
the major portion of every exorcism was taken up with shattering a
pretense, dispelling a smokescreen; that the most dangerous period lay
in the Breakpoint of that Pretense and in the clash of wills that
followed at once between the exorcist and the thing that tortured the
possessed; and that the "Grate Panjandhr'm" (Conor's epithet for the
Devil) intervened only rarely.

In Conor's view, the world of evil spirits was like an autocratic
organization: "Joe Shtaleen used to sind Molotov to do his dirty work.
So the Grate Panjandhr'm sens his hinchmin."

Conor taught Peter tricks and ruses; and he gave him tags — phrases,
words, numbers, concepts — to label perilous phases, capital moments
and events in an exorcism. He made available to Peter some of his own
practices: the use of "teaser texts," for instance. At certain awkward
gaps in the exorcism, there was no way to contend head to head with
the possessed and with what was possessing them. The possessing
spirit literally hid behind the identity of the possessed. It had to be
flushed out into the open. Conor had the habit of reading certain texts
chosen from the Gospels, until such time as the spirit made mistakes or
arrogantly threw aside its disguise.

Conor's advice was always concrete and vivid, and always in Peter's
mind echoed with that warm, fresh brogue they both shared like a
piece of common turf: "The t'ing is beyond yer mind. It's a sperrit agin

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 39

yoors. The reel camuflin' starrts inside in yeh. And yeh'r just an ole
toe-rag, unless Jesus is vvid yeh."

But, above all else, Conor reconciled Peter to the inevitable drain
on the exorcist. He explained in simple terms what wounds he could
receive as an exorcist, what wounds he should avoid, and what wounds
were incurable once inflicted on him. All these wounds were
"internal" to spirit and mind and memory and will. Peter had received
some minor ones already. He now realized what he could undergo.

Conor refined Peter's primitive idea of "the Devil" and of "Devils,"
expressing in simple terms what to most moderns is an enigma if not
downright nonsense: how that which has no body can be a person,
have a personality. And he dealt curtly with psychoanalysts: "Down
the road a bit, they're goin' to find out that the whole thing is entoirely
different; and then they'll put Siggy and company up on the shelves as
histhoric'l lave-overrs, like Galen on bones or Arishtot'l on plants."

But it was not Conor who rid Peter of his lack of confidence. He
could never give Peter a reason to trust his own judgment. It was the
man who in two years would become Paul VI who made that change
in him.

Peter never exchanged one sentence with Giovanni Battista Mon-
tini, then Archbishop of Milan. Montini had been relegated from the
Vatican to the political wilderness of Milan by Pope Pius XII, had
survived it, and now was back in Rome — "still listening to his voices"
(as the Roman wags described the ethereal gaze of Montini and the
impression he gave of having shutters over his eyes to hide the light
within) — and was deeply involved in the council.

One of Montini's theologian-counselors was impressed with Peter's
arguments at an evening meal. They met several times afterwards
during Peter's stay. Once they went with Conor to a gathering of
theologians who were discussing issues being hotly debated on the
council floor. Such gatherings were frequent in those days; Archbishop
Montini was the guest of honor at this particular meeting.

As Montini arrived and walked to his seat, Conor gossiped in a
whisper with Peter: "They tell me, my frind, that Johnny [then Pope
John XXIII] won't lasht long." Then with a nod in Montini's direction:
"There's the nixt wan."

But Peter was not interested in future popes as such. For an
inexplicable reason, he was fascinated by Montini. Everything about
the man, his person, and his speech and his writings had a peculiar

40 THE CASES

significance for Peter. As he remarked to Conor, ''He seems to walk
with a great vision no one else sees."

He set out to learn all he could about Montini, speaking with those
who knew the archbishop, reading his sermons, frequenting Montini's
familiars and employees. He even got to the stage of referring to
Montini as Zio, a name used affectionately by those around the
archbishop.

Peter came to share Conor's trenchant point of view on recent
popes: "Pacelli [Pius XII] was loike a shliver of ice serrved up in an
archangel's cocktail at the hivinly banquit," confided Conor wryly as
they walked home one evening. "Awsteerr, arishtocratic, sometimes
wid a dead-an'-dug-up look, y'know. Johnny [John XXIII], av coorse, is
out on his own, a mountin uv sperrit. But this lil' fella [Montini] has an
airr V thragedee."

Peter made a point of going to listen to Montini whenever he was
billed to speak in public. It was on one of these occasions that he had
his "Montini experience." Together with others present, he knelt to
receive the archbishop's blessing at the end of his speech. As Montini
raised his right hand to make the sign of the cross, Peter lifted his eyes.
They locked with Montini's at the juncture point of the cross the
archbishop traced in the air. As he looked, the "shutters" over
Montini's eyes opened for an instant. Montini's gaze was momentarily
an almost dazzling brilliance of feeling warmth, communication. Then
the "shutters" closed again, as Montini's eyes traveled on over the
heads of the others kneeling around Peter.

Afterwards, Peter knew that the empty feeling of diffidence had left
him. For the first time in his life, he had no fears.

That was in mid-November of 1962. At the beginning of December,
as the first session of the council ended, he was told that he had been
freed from his obligations back in New York and that he could go
home to Ireland for Christmas. After Christmas vacation in his home
town, he worked in Ireland from January 1963 until August 1965.

He was winding up his summer vacation in July 1965 and preparing
to return to work in Kerry, when he received a short note from New
York telling him of Marianne K., a young woman, apparently a
genuine case of possession. The note was urgent: the authorities felt he
could best handle the affair. Could he come over immediately?

In mid-August he arrived in New York.

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 41

MARIANNE K.

Toward the spring of 1964, and thousands of miles away from the calm
and fresh Kerry countryside where Peter was then living, the habitues
of Bryant Park, in New York City, began to notice a skinny young
woman of medium height wearing jeans, sandals, and a blouse, with a
raincoat thrown over her shoulders. Her visits there were irregular;
and she stayed for unpredictable periods of time, sometimes for hours,
sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes, once for two days. The weather
had nothing to do with the length of her stay; sunshine, rain, snow,
cold made no difference. She looked clean; but those she passed got
the rancid odor of unwashed hair and skin. She never spoke to anyone,
and never stood or sat in exactly the same place twice. Always she had
a fixed expression, a kind of frozen smile that was only on her mouth;
her eyes were blank, her cheeks unlined, taut; her teeth were never
visible through the fixed and smiling lips. Her blonde hair was usually
unkempt. Those who frequently saw her nicknamed her the Smiler.
Marianne K.

Her behavior was harmless, though erratic, at first. Some days she
came, sat or stood without any motion to speak of. Then she departed
suddenly as if on a signal. Other days, she arrived, gazed blankly
around at every corner, then left precipitately. At other times she
brought little wooden sticks which she ceremoniously stood upright in
the earth, tying scraps of cloth with a single bow to their base. "Like
little crosses upside down," was a description given later.

Only once in that early time did she cause any commotion. She
came to Bryant Park one morning, sat down for a while, then stood up
stock-still facing south, with what could have been taken as a beatific
gleam in her eyes. Someone passed by carrying a radio blaring music.
As the radio came level with her, suddenly she flung her hands to her
ears, screamed, spun around like a top, and fell hard on her face, her
body twitching. A score of people gathered around her. A policeman
strolled over with the unspeed of the New York cop. "Turn that thing
off, pal," he said to the owner of the radio.

Almost immediately a tall man was by the policeman's side. "She's
Marianne. I will take care of her." He spoke in a voice of authority and
very clearly.

"Are you a relative?" the policeman asked, looking up as he
crouched on his haunches beside Marianne.

42 THE CASES

"I'm the only one she has in this world." The policeman remem-
bered the man touched Marianne on the left wrist and spoke quietly.
In a few seconds she awoke, and got quickly but unsteadily to her feet.
Her face still had the smile. Together, she and the tall man walked
slowly away towards Fifth Avenue.

"You needn't report it, Officer."

The policeman heard the words said evenly, confidently, over the
man's shoulder. "I was sure they were father and daughter," he
commented later in recalling the incident. "He looked old enough; and
they both smiled in exactly the same way."

Nothing of a recorded public nature took place again in Marianne's
case, even though she was already in a state of possession by an evil
spirit.

No definite sign of that possession, unequivocal in itself, had been
visible in her from her childhood days until well into the year
following the incident in Bryant Park.

Marianne grew up with one brother a year younger than she. They
spent their first years in Philadelphia. The family was then of lower
middle income. It was strongly Roman Catholic and closely knit. Her
parents, both of Polish origin and second-generation American, had no
living relatives in the United States. Close friends were few. Neither of
them had completed high school; and they had never found time for
culture or much leisure for the finer things in life. Her mother was a
quiet-spoken, firm woman who held a job and continually worried
about bills. Her father was a bluff, down-to-earth character who grew
up in the Depression, married late, was solidly faithful to his wife,
never fretted about difficulties, and, outside his working hours, spent
all his spare time at home.

Discipline was not rigid at home, and a good deal of fun and
merriment ran through it all. Both children were reared to lead an
orderly existence. Religion occupied a prominent place in their lives.
Prayers in common were recited mornings and evenings. Family love
and loyalty were based on religious belief. The Polish pastor was the
ultimate authority.

In those early years there was such a strong resemblance between
Marianne and George, her younger brother, that they were often
mistaken for twins. When their mother or father called them, either of
them could answer by mimicking perfectly the voice of the other.
They had special signs and words of their own, a kind of private

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 43

language they could use. Marianne relied on George to a great extent.
She was left-handed, had begun to speak normally only at the age of
six, and was very shy and obstinate.

This close companionship between the two children was broken
when, around Marianne's eighth birthday, the family moved to New
York, where her father had been reassigned by his company. His new
position made the family financially secure and comfortable. Mari-
anne's mother no longer worked at a job outside the home. Her
brother was successful in school. He made friends easily, was a good
athlete, and had a rollicking disposition. In New York he gradually
sought the company of his peers, and so spent less and less time with
his sister.

Marianne made few friends and was at ease only when at home. She
never seemed to prefer one parent over the other. After finishing high
school, she spent two years at Manhattanville College, where her
academic interests were physics and philosophy. But her stay there
was stormy and unhappy. She wanted the "full truth, to know it all,"
she told her teachers in the first flush of enthusiasm. But with time she
seemed to get cynical and disillusioned, and gave the impression she
believed they were evading the real problem and hiding the full truth
from her.

She found particular difficulty with her metaphysics teacher, a
certain Mother Virgilius, middle-aged, myopic, high-voiced, exigent, a
disciplinarian and member of the "old school." Mother Virgilius taught
Scholastic philosophy. She derided modern philosophers and their
theories. Her arguments with Marianne were, from the start, bitter
and inconclusive. The girl kept plying the older woman with
questions, perpetually throwing doubt on any statement Mother
Virgilius made, driving her back step by step until the nun rested
desperately on her own basic ideas she had accepted but had never
questioned. And Marianne was too clever and too tenacious for her,
leaping nimbly from objection to objection and strewing difficulties
and remarks to trip her up.

But clearly what Marianne was after seemed to be a trap of an odd
kind in which to catch the nun. There didn't seem to be any desire on
her part to find out something true or to deepen her knowledge, only a
disturbing viciousness, a stony-faced cunning with words and argu-
ments alternating with a sardonic silence and smirking satisfaction, all
leading to confusion and curiously bitter derision.

44 THE CASES

Virgilius sensed this but could not identify it. She merely stood on
her dignity. But this was no help to either of them.

It all came to a head one afternoon. The lecture concerned the
principle of contradiction. "If something exists, if something is, then it
cannot but exist. It cannot not be at the same time and under the same
respect,'' concluded Mother Virgilius in her high pitch. "The table is
here. While it is here, it cannot not be here. Being and nonbeing
cannot be identified."

As she finished, Marianne's hand shot up. "Why can't they be
identified?"

They had been over this ground interminably. The nun had no more
answers and no more patience. "Marianne, we will discuss this later."

"You say that because you cannot prove it. You just presume it."

"First principles cannot be proven. They ..."

"Why can't I have another first principle? Say: being and nonbeing
are inseparable. The table is here because it isn't here. God exists
because he doesn't exist at the same time."

A titter ran around the class.

Marianne rounded on her classmates: "It's no joke! We exist and we
don't exist!"

The general amusement gave way to hostility and embarrassment.
None in the room, Virgilius included, realized, as Marianne reflects
today, that by some kink of inner impulse, her mind was running in
little twisted gorges of confusion. She was guided by no clear ideas,
was not commenting from a rich store of reflection and experience, but
was only pulled by a peculiar fascination with the negative. Many a
greater mind had fallen off a dark cliff somewhere along this same way
or impaled itself in desperation on some sharp rocks.

Virgilius, feeling already tired, was humiliated. She got angry. "I
told you, Miss, we will speak . . ."

But before she had finished the sentence, Marianne was on her feet,
had swept up her books, glared at everyone, and was out the door.

Marianne refused to return to Manhattanville. To all questions as to
why and to all entreaties that she give it another chance, she kept
repeating: "They are trying to enslave my mind. I want to be free, to
know all reality, to be real." She had nothing but contempt for her
former teachers. But none of them could guess how far she had already
gone in this contempt.

As she traces it now, her new path began when she decided that her

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 45

teachers — Mother Virgilius among them — were phonies, that they
merely repeated what they had been taught. There was nothing
abnormal in this. Up to a certain level, Marianne had an emotional
reaction rather normal in the adolescent. But she pursued it with a
logic that was not normal for her years. And she was deliberately
isolated: she did not communicate with her companions, nor did she
discuss it with her parents. She was determined to work it out for
herself.

Gradually she extended the same premise ("All authorities in my life
are phonies, because they repeat what they are told and never
inquire") to her parents, to the priests at the local church, to the
religious teaching she had been given, and to the habits and customs of
daily life. To everything.

Her parents knew nothing of philosophy. And when Marianne spoke
darkly of "how good it is to see all the 'noes' side by side with the
'yesses' " or of "dirt on the nose of the Venus de Milo" or of "murder
as an act of beauty as real as composing a sonata," they were
bewildered. They only knew that they loved her; but manifestations of
that love were taken by Marianne as chains thrown around her. "If
only you could hate me, Mummy, just for five minutes, we would get
along so well," she said once to her mother. At another time: "Why
doesn't Daddy rape me or break my nose with his fist? Then I would
see my beauty. And he would be real for me."

In the end, after much discussion and consultation, it was decided to
send Marianne to Hunter College for the fall semester of 1954.
Perhaps a purely secular school with good standards would satisfy
what her parents could only take on the surface to be Marianne's urge
to acquire knowledge.

Academically Marianne never had any difficulty during her three
years at Hunter, But the rhythm of family life changed around this
time. And she took a totally unexpected turn in character. George, her
brother, had gone away the previous year to study oceanography. He
had been the one human being with whom she communicated on an
intimate basis. Her father was more frequently than ever out of town
traveling for his company. Her mother, who had taken up working
again in an advertising agency, lost any real contact with Marianne by
the end of her first year at Hunter.

Her contemporaries at the college remember her as a rather plump,
grave-faced girl who rarely laughed, did not smile easily, spoke in a
low voice, had few friends, never dated boys, gave the impression of

46 THE CASES

great stubbornness whenever an argument arose, and (as far as they
were concerned) was a "homebody.'' But neither they nor her family
knew anything about her first meeting with the Man.

During her first two years at college, Marianne used to go
downtown and sit in Washington Square Park, reading her textbooks
and making notes. One afternoon in 1956, as she was reading William
James' Varieties of Religions Experience, she felt suddenly, but
without any sense of shock, that someone was bending over her
shoulder and looking at the pages of her book. She looked around. He
was a rather tall individual whose face and clothes never impressed
themselves on her memory. His left hand was resting on the back of
the park bench. Her one clear memory is only of his mouth and the
regular teeth she glimpsed behind his lips as he read repeatedly from
the open page of her book the words: "When you find a man living on
the ragged edge of his consciousness . . ." running all the words as
one sentence several times over and over again without pause or stop.
The mouth kept repeating and repeating: ". . . on the ragged edge of
consciousness on the ragged edge of consciousness on the ragged edge
of consciousness on the . . ." It was done softly. Without hurry.
Without emphasis. Until the words became a slowly whirling carousel
in her ears, and her mind moved in circles, bumping against them on
all sides. She burst into tears.

The mouth said, still softly: "They are all pushing you along the
ragged edge. W 7 ant to get off it?"

She remembers a few things. She said through her tears: "I don't
want them to help me. Just to leave me alone."

He sat with her for about one hour. The left hand remained visible
in her memory. And the mouth. She remembers nothing else of him,
except that there were instructions: "Don't let any man touch you!
You have a short time to reach your true self! Come and find me
regularly!" And there was one peculiar instruction: "Seek those of the
Kingdom. They will know you. You will know them."

It was from this time that her family and acquaintances noticed
definite changes in Marianne. She disappeared from home for long
mornings and afternoons, even when there were no lectures or lab
work at college. She spoke rarely with her parents. Her meals at home
grew less frequent. Her contemporaries at Hunter noticed that she
became more introspective, more fearful of strangers, more reticent
with those who knew her, and extremely shy.

Her mother became worried. After much persuasion, she induced

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SM1LER 47

Marianne to see a psychiatrist. But after a couple of sessions, he
dismissed her; he told her parents that, while she certainly needed
more nourishment (she had been losing weight) and much love, he
could detect nothing awry or dangerous in her psychology. She just
wanted to be free; and this was, he said, the new generation. Anyway,
he advised them, they should think of her age: rebellion and
independence were normal for her age bracket.

Her father was satisfied. But her mother felt some deep apprehen-
sion.

"By the time they realized that I was in earnest about the change in
me," says Marianne, "I had already accepted the authority of the Man
in my life. I had changed profoundly. I mean: my inner life-style
altered under his influence."

Marianne always refers to this figure as "the Man"; but nowadays it
is impossible for her to determine if he was hallucination, deliberate
figment of her own, a real person, or merely a metaphor and symbol of
her initial revolt. Indeed, in Marianne's memory of the nine years
between that first meeting with the Man and the exorcism of 1965, the
Man keeps on appearing and reappearing in her recollections. But
most of the time, especially the last four years, is nearly a total blank.
Only a few searing experiences stand out starkly for her.

Having finished at Hunter, Marianne decided to follow postgraduate
courses in physics at New York University. Her isolation now became
complete. After a little over one year at New York University, she
dropped out, took an apartment in the East Village, and started
working as a sales clerk in a store on Union Square. Her behavior,
according to the conservative Catholic standards of her parents, was
unorthodox. Marianne never went to church any longer. She lived
sporadically with various men, did not take care of her external
appearance, and spoke disparagingly — sometimes very rudely and
with four-letter words — of all that her parents held dear. She did not
allow them to bother her.

For their part, her parents worried greatly; but, following the
hopeful lead of the psychiatrist, they still thought that all this was a
temporary phase of rebellion. They did worry in particular about her
health: she shrank from 130 pounds to 95 pounds in a matter of
months. But, in great anguish and confusion, her mother ceased
leaving food packages at the door of Marianne's apartment, when the
first one was delivered back smelling and dripping. Marianne had
mixed excrement and urine with the fruit and sandwiches.

48 THE CASES

In her memory now, the next big step in her ehanging "inner
life-style," as she terms it, concerned formal religion and religious
belief. She took that step consciously, with the Man by her side, and
on two particular occasions.

One occasion was on Palm Sunday. In the evening as she passed by
a church, services were being conducted. Something about the lights
in this particular church aroused her interest — "It was in the nature of
a challenge," she recalls. She entered and stood among the people at
the back of the church. Suddenly she felt the same disgust and
rejection then as she had experienced toward her parents and
teachers. As she turned to go, the Man beside her turned also. He had
been there but she hadn't noticed him.

"Had enough, my friend?" he said quietly, jocularly.

She saw his smile in the half-darkness, and smiled back at him. He
said: "The smile of the Kingdom is now yours." Then, as they left: "If
you don't like it, you haven't got to lump it, y'know." They both
smiled. That was all.

The second occasion took place the next week, at Easter. An
illuminated cross was set up on the General Building on Park Avenue.
She was viewing this from the corner of 56th Street and Park Avenue,
when she heard the Man nearby say: "Seems one-sided. Shouldn't they
turn it upside down also? Just in order to balance the odds? Same
thing, really. Only in perfect balance." The Man smiled.

"For me," comments Marianne now, "it was a perfect smile. You
hadn't to balance it up with a scowl. Perfect for me then."

At home that night, she found herself drawing inverted crosses side
by side with upright crosses. But she could not bring herself to draw
the crucified figure on either type of cross. Whenever she tried, "The
pencil ran away into S-shapes and Z-shapes and X-shapes." From that
time on, there started in earnest what she recalls as a "new color and
form in my inner life-style." Her descriptions of it are confused and
marked by expressions that one finds difficult to understand. But the
overall meaning of what she says is chilling. The whole process was an
acquisition of the "naked light" and her "marriage with nothingness,"
expressions she learned from the Man.

"I began to live exactly according to my belief. I mean, inside
myself, my thoughts, feelings, memories, and all mental activity moved
accordingly. I reacted to all things — people and things and happen-
ings — as if they were one side of the real coin. And I rapidly found
that all people have a powerful force in them — as humans. People,

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 49

things, events, challenge us to respond. The way we respond gives the
things we respond to a special quality. In a sense, we make them what
they turn out to be for us.

' 'Let me give you an example that will also tell you to what an
extent I pursued my idea. Once outside the Public Library on 42nd
Street, on a sunny afternoon, a well-dressed woman passed by on the
arm of a man. I was sitting on the steps, and she smiled at me. I found
myself smiling back at them and saying by my smile (because I felt like
that inside me): 'You like me. I like you. You hate me. I hate you. See!
It is all the same!' She must have realized the same things, because the
smile sort of froze on her face; but she went on smiling — as I did.

''Another day, I picked up a young man on Third Avenue. We went
to his apartment and had intercourse. He was gentle; but when I was
finished with him, he was a very frightened being. I guess I showed
him a side of his character he never guessed existed. And I could see
by his face that he was scared. I insisted he make coffee. Drinking it
while still naked, I told him how much I hated him and how much he
hated me really, and that the more he loved me and I, him, the more
we hated each other. I can still see the blood draining from his face
and the fear in the whites of his eyes. He was obviously afraid of some
trouble. When he mumbled something about Tlyde' and 'Jekyll,' I
said: 'Oh no, man! Put the two in one with no switching back and
forth, and you have it down pat. Jekyll-Hyde. That's perfect. See?"

From now on, as she remembers it, Marianne's development went in
two quick stages. The first stage was very rapid. It consisted of a total
independence. Except insofar as she needed them for survival or
pleasure, she no longer bothered about anyone or anything. She had no
more decisions to make about being morally good or evil; whether life
was good or bad, worth quitting or worth continuing; whether she
liked or disliked; whether she was liked or disliked; whether she met
her obligations or shirked them.

The second stage was more difficult and went by fits and starts. It
began with a near-adoration of herself. It ended in her "marriage with
nothingness" and the fullness of the "naked light." It became clear
during her exorcism a few years later that these were terms that
described her total subjection to an evil spirit.

She came to monitor her perceptions closely and scrupulously. At
first she was fascinated by her perceptions; they came with a startling
freshness, appearing to be utterly original in their source — her self.
She became in her own eyes a genius with a single vision. She found

50 THE CASES

the company of others exasperating and destructive. To talk with
another softened the sharp edge of her perception; to do anything with
another meant clothing herself in false clothes and not being wholly
herself; to feel anything with anyone else meant she would feel only
relatively, for she had to take account of them. Ideally, she believed,
one should feel absolutely whatever one felt; whatever one thought
one should think completely; whatever one desired one should desire
totally. No concentration on self could be greater.

Before she achieved absolute isolation, whenever she returned from
a conversation or a meal with others, or even after listening to a
lecture or working in the laboratory, it was very difficult for her to
regain "the inner space and the single vision" she had possessed before
such contacts. She was left with a "double vision"; she was blurred,
confused, and confusing in herself. She had to spend days "doing her
own thing" — walking in the park (this she now did almost every day),
sitting in her apartment writing page after page, which she immedi-
ately tore up and which she never reread; sitting or standing still for
hours — until at last she was fully absorbed in the self that had been
hiding. Then quite suddenly all the clamor would fade out. In the
presence of that inner self all was naked again. And absolute. And
secure. No longer was she interrupted or disrupted by the "bad flow"
from others.

As she reached more and more permanent mastery of her isolation,
she came to realize that the self she sought lay "beyond" and
"beneath" and "behind" (to use her own expressions) the world of her
psychophysical actions and reactions. Out of reach of the endless
rhythm of responses, of recordings on her memory, of the fast-paced
hip chatter of her companions, of blaring monologues by individuals.
She became slowly more sensitive and expectant that she would find
the self she sought, wrapped in semitransparent shadows. It was
independent, she believed, of that distracting outer world, and of her
inner psychic theater which was always at the mercy of that outer
world and was so easily shattered by it. The restlessness of details had
no place with the self. She came to believe that, if she could prevent
the "bad flow" of others entering, she could achieve "perfection of
personhood."

"One of my big realizations was that in any commerce with
others — a conversation, working with them, even being in their
presence while they talked and acted with others — there were two
levels of 'flow,' of communication."

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 51

One, the * 'outer one," was — as Marianne perceived it — the one with
which she heard, saw, touched, tasted, smelled, remembered in
images, conceptualized, and verbalized. All of its functions could be
duplicated by a skillfully built machine, a computer, for instance. A lot
of it could be found in highly intelligent animals. But in human beings
you couldn't have this "outer" level of communication without the
second level.

The second level of communication was, Marianne believed, a
"flow" or "influence" from each person to another. And whenever two
human beings communicated, they did so on both levels simultane-
ously. And they did so even if they didn't know it or wouldn't admit it.

Marianne had very definite ideas on the source of that second level
of communication. Her academic training and her avid reading had
given a very sophisticated edge to her viewpoint:

"The source was not the subconscious, not a sixth sense or telepathy
or any of those gimmicky tags," as she puts it. The source, she thought,
was the self in each one. She said: "The self has a means of
communication which does not need images or thoughts or logic or
any particle of matter." Psychologists and physiologists, she knew,
identified the self with brain circuitry and synaptic joints and the
mechanisms of sensation. This was like saying that the violin was the
source of the violinists music. Religionists and spiritualists identified
the self with "soul" or "spirit" — even with God, or a god. And both
psychologists and religionists insisted you make choices. And so, in
most people, that source and its "flow" were split into a kind of
"black-and-white" condition. Most people were always choosing,
responding, being responsible for their actions, saying yes or no, and
thereby "fissioning the self's lively unity."

Rarely did Marianne meet anyone whose "flow" entered and left
her without attempting to split up the self she had found within her.
She remembers that the Man's "flow" was absolutely right, that he
even helped her to reach "the place of semitransparent shadows." At
other times, in the subway, on the streets, at shop windows, she would
receive helpful influence from passersby. But she never managed to
find precisely from whom it came. Her daily life became a series of
efforts to resist the "flow" from all but those who, like her ideal, had
the "perfect flow" and the "perfect balance," who had "nothingness
within them."

She has vague memories of continuing to be instructed by the Man,
of seeing him regularly, of listening to him talk, of obeying some

52 THE CASES

dictates he gave. Bat one can glean nothing precise or detailed from
Marianne about her instructions. Even an effort by her today to
recollect such instructions of the Man produces sudden panics and
fears that temporarily paralyze her mind. It is as if, today, remnants of
the Man's influence cling somewhere in the deep recesses of her inner
being, and any effort to recall those days of her possession is like
peeling the scab off a healing wound.

The end of her striving came one day in Bryant Park. She had
entered cautiously, feeling the "flow" of all present, ready to flee if any
disturbance came her way. He was sitting languidly on a bench doing
nothing in particular, staring vacantly into space.

Sitting down at the other end of the bench, Marianne gazed
vacantly on the passing scene. In the morning sunlight, beneath a sky
cleansed by a light breeze, the traffic hummed with the busy
purposefulness of other human beings about their day's work. School
children and office workers passed by on their different ways. The
pigeons were feeding. It could not have been a more peaceful city
scene.

Then, in a quick instant, some tremendous pressure seemed to fall
all around Marianne from head to toe like a net. She shivered. And
then some invisible hand seemed to have pulled a tightening cord, so
that the net slipped through every inch of her body and outer self,
tightening and tightening. "As the net contracted in size passing
through my outer person, it gathered and compressed every particle of
my self."

Marianne no longer saw or felt any sensation of sunlight or wind.
The outer world had become a flat and painted picture neither fresh
nor hot nor cold. And the movements of people and animals and
objects were angular tracings with no depth and no coherent sound.
All meaning was drained from the scene.

The only movement was within her. Bit by bit "the net, now like a
sharp, all- surrounding hand, tightened, narrowing and narrowing all
my consciousness." At every moment, under that pressure, she was
"opening up every secret part of my self, saying, 'Yes,' 'Yes,' 'Yes,' to a
power that would not take 'No' for an answer."

And none who saw her, a young girl sprawled motionless on the
bench in the sunlight, could guess that Marianne was becoming a
casement of possession.

Without any warning the pressure ceased. The net had been drawn
tight. She was held invincibly, securely. And then she realized, like

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 53

waking up from sleep, that some kind of mist or fog was lifting from
her consciousness, allowing her a new sensation. She now knew that all
along — all her life — she had been very near to "dusk, an accom-
panying darkness." Even as she once more saw the grass, trees, men,
women, children, animals, sun, sky, buildings, with their indifference
and innocence in her regard, she saw also this dusk everywhere.

The dusk crept into her, like a snake slithering easily and lazily into
a favorite hole, bringing with it twilight rustlings of such "smoky
transparencies," such "opaque light," and such "brightest shadows"
that a thrill ripped through her whole being.

What entered her seemed to be "personal," to have an individual
identity but of such seductive repulsiveness that the thrill she felt
stung her with a "pain-pleasure" she had never dreamed possible. She
felt her "whole being going quiet, self- aware, dissolving all the
cobwebs." It was like falling in love with the open jaws of an alligator.
Each splotch of its saliva, each hook of its teeth, each crevasse in its
mouth "was animal, just animal, and personal."

All the while she kept on repeating "yes" silently as if answering a
request for marriage or a demand for surrender. Time seemed to stand
still, "as a bestiary of animal sounds and smells and presences"
gradually flowed into her consciousness and mingled there with the
sounds of children laughing, the tones of workmen nearby calling out
jokes, or snatches of conversation from couples passing along the
pathway. All the sounds that had enlivened the morning when she had
entered Bryant Park now seeped with "a new odor of old and new
corrupting things, of cor nipt ion." The cool snap of the air and the
sound of the traffic were marinated in a fluid of "grunts, snarls, hisses,
bello wings, helpless bleatings." The blue of the sky, the shining faces
of the skyscrapers, the green of the grass, all the colors around her
were, according to her memory, suffused in wreaths of black, browns,
reds.

It was the "balance" she had always sought. "I have finally stepped
into the locus of my self," she reflected. It had always been there, of
course. This was the wonder and the awe of it all. And the core of that
wonder was "finding it to be nowhere, in a room with an empty chair
that did not exist, bare walls that faded into nothingness," and she
herself "at last seen as a final illusion dissipated and annihilated into
nothingful oneness."

She stood up to go, overjoyed with her newfound "thrill of balance."
But she was whiplashed back to clamorous and unwanted sense by

54 THE CASES

music from a portable radio on the arm of a passerby. The snake
resting inside her had suddenly coiled like a whip cord and was lashing
out at the attempted entry of any singular beauty or grace. She felt
herself falling and whirling, falling and whirling. It was as if inside her
head a little flywheel had broken loose and was whipping itself into a
high-pitched scream as it sped faster and faster. The ground came up
and hit her across the forehead. But the real suffering was deep inside
her. "Never did I know such sadness and pain," she said.

"When I walked away with the Man's help, he said little. His words
burned themselves into my memory: 'Don't fear. You have now
married nothingness and are of the Kingdom.' I understood it all
without understanding anything at all with my intellect or reason. I
said, 'Yes! Yes! All of me belongs now.'

"Nothing was ever the same again, until after I was exorcised."

It was not so much what Marianne had learned. It was rather what
she had become. "I was not another person. I was the same. Only I
was convinced I had become free by being totally independent and by
what had entered me and taken up residence inside me."

Just to confirm herself in her conviction, "at one point about twelve
months before the exorcism, I did go to a psychiatrist — really to find
out how far I had traveled from the ordinary idea of being normal. As
he spoke, I realized that all he said, the terminology and concepts he
used, and the theories he relied on were such claptrap, all this was
only halfway house to where I had arrived. He was treating me as if I
were a sick human animal — concentrating on the animal part of me.
But he did not know anything about spirit; and so I knew then he
could not understand the spirit part of me, could not understand me.
He smothered me in words and methods. Even tried some amateur
hypnotic business. He finished up talking more about himself than me.

"A second psychiatrist told me I needed to travel, to get away from
it all — but this was at the end of a long session. Again, in this case, I
found that nothing the therapist, a woman this time, nothing she did
by way of accepted psychoanalytic methods (discussions, monologues
on a couch, hypnosis, pharmacology, etc.) ever reached beyond the
shallow level of my psychic acts and consciousness. I always saw the
therapist as if she were stalking around me fascinated by images and
surfaces and terminology; and I saw my psychic self, this partial, puny
mechanism in me, responding to her. All along, the real me, my very
self which doesn't deal in images or words at all, was untouched. Its

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 55

area was never entered by the therapist. No psychiatrist could fit in
through the doorway because of the load of images and emotions and
concepts he carried about with him. Only the naked I enters and lives
there."

From now on, as far as any outside observer could have assessed,
Marianne's course was a deterioration. After the "marriage with
nothingness" in Bryant Park, some fixed moorings seemed to have
been severed.

She encouraged all forms of sexual intercourse with men and
women, but never found anyone willing "to go the whole hog."
Lesbians generally stayed at the surface, wishing to generate pleasure
and satisfaction without the necessity of a male. Men with whom she
had anal intercourse suddenly became appalled, and usually impotent,
when she proceeded to act out anal intercourse "to its fullest extent,"
as she said. In her view, they wanted merely a novel experience but
were quite unwilling "to achieve complete bestiality." They could
only take "a little of the beast." They missed "the deliciousness of
beauty bestialized and of beast beautified."

The few neighborhood people who saw her with any frequency
began to think she was peculiar. She rarely spoke. In shops she would
point to what she wanted to buy or hand it to the shopkeeper with a
grunt. She never looked them in the eye. All had a vague feeling of
threat or danger, some indefinable sense of an unknown fire in her, as
long as she stood near them.

Her parents tried to see her several times, but could speak to her
only through the locked door of her apartment. Her language to them
was littered with obscenities.

Once the neighbors heard dull thuds and crashes for four to five
hours. Finally overcoming the reluctance of East Village apartment
dwellers to interfere with anyone, they called the police. The door had
to be forced. The smell in the room was stomach-curdling. And they
could not understand the freezing temperature, while outside New
York sweltered in the fetid humidity of high summer.

The room was in chaos. On the floor around the bed and table, in
the closets, bathroom, and kitchenette, there were thousands of torn
sheets of paper covered with indecipherable scrawls. Marianne was
lying across the bed, one leg bent beneath her, a little blood dropping
from the corner of her mouth, her eyes open and sightless. She was
breathing regularly.

An ambulance called by someone arrived just when Marianne

56 THE CASES

stirred and sat up. She took in the scene in one glance. Quickly her
face changed; she spoke in a normal voice, and assured them that all
was well. She had fallen, she said, from a chair while fixing the
curtains. ''Police don't want trouble," she comments in recalling
the incident. "And anyway, I radiated too much power and self-
confidence. The only thing I wanted to do was to shout obscenities in
their faces: 'You missed it all! I've just been fucked by a big-bellied
spider.' But there was no point in saying that." They left her alone.

During all this time, Marianne always smelled bad, and she seemed
to have constant cuts and bruises on her shins and the back of her
hands. She never displayed any emotion except when confronted with
a crucifix, or someone making the sign of the cross, the sound of
church bells, the smell of incense from a church door, the sight of a
nun or a priest, or the mention of the name of Jesus (even when
spoken as an oath or used in jest). Her brother, George, who later went
around her familiar haunts, was told by many that at such moments
she seemed to shrink inside herself like somebody under a rain of
blows, and through the gap in her dreadful, constant smile they would
hear growled gurgles of resentment.

Violence to others was rare. On one occasion a schoolgirl with a
collection box for a local church cause, shook the box in her face
asking for a contribution. Marianne screamed through her teeth, fell
into a paroxysm of weeping, shielding her eyes with her hands and
kicking violently at the girl's shins. On the front of the box, she still
recalls, there was a crucified figure together with the name of Jesus.

On the other hand, she repelled threatening violence rather easily.
In the dusk of one October evening, at the corner of Leroy Street, she
was accosted by a mugger. She remembers clearly that he made his
first move at her from behind. She turned her face deliberately to him,
displaying the full extent of that twisted smile to him: "Yes, my
brother?" He stopped as if he had run up against an invisible brick
wall and stood staring; he seemed unexpectedly and painfully bruised.
Then with a scared glance, he backed away from her and took to his
heels.

About May 1965 things were brought to a head. Marianne's brother
returned to New York for an extended visit. George was married by
now and the father of two children. Visits back home were not easy to
arrange. Their mother had kept him informed by letter of the rift

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 57

between Marianne and her parents. But she had given no idea of the
extent to which Marianne had changed.

Now he heard the full story. He talked with Marianne's most recent
employers and the few people who came into contact with her — her
landlord, the grocer, and a few others. He even went to the local
police precinct. The news was bad right through. No one had a good
word to say for his sister. George could not bring himself to believe the
stories about the little Marianne he had been so close to. Some spoke
disparagingly of her in a way that hurt him deeply. Others manifested
a great fear and apprehension about her. One police sergeant went
very far: "If I didn't know otherwise, son, I would say you're a bloody
liar and not the brother of that one. This gal is bad, bad, bad news.
And, besides, there's something mucky about her. Doesn't even look
like a fine lad like you.''

George finally decided to go and see his sister for himself. Their
mother sat him down in the kitchen before he went. George recalls
now that she warned him "what ails our baby is something bad,
something real bad. It's not the body. And it's not her mind. She's gone
away with evil. That's it. Evil."

George took most of this and much more of the same with a grain of
salt: it was his superstitious and beloved mother speaking about her
little baby. She gave him a crucifix and told him to leave it hidden in
Marianne's room. She said: "You'll see, son. She won't stand for it.
You'll see." To humor her, George took the crucifix, put it in his
pocket, promptly forgot about it, and went downtown to see
Marianne.

It was the first time George and Marianne had met in about eight
years. And he was also the first of her immediate family she had
consented to see in about six years. Marianne was visibly delighted to
see him in her one-room apartment. But George, sitting and listening
to her talking slowly in a soft, staccato voice, knew immediately that
something was indeed wrong with his sister, that some very deep
change had taken place in her.

She was still recognizable to him as his sister — the mannerisms he
had known in their earlier years were visibly there. And she still had
the "family face" which he shared with her. But, as George told it, she
seemed "to have seen something which constantly filled her mind even
while talking to me. She was speaking for the benefit of somebody
else's ear, repeating what somebody else was telling her." He had a

58 THE CASES

funny feeling that made him look foolish to himself: she was not alone,
and he knew it. But he could not get the sense of it all. He was not
only puzzled by her behavior, but by its effect on him: she frightened
him. George normally did not frighten easily. And he never had felt
fear with any of his immediate family.

He was slightly reassured when, several times during the conversa-
tion, he saw glimmers of the personality he had known in their young
years when they were inseparable companions. But at those moments
she seemed to be appealing for help or trying to overcome some
obstacle he could not define and she could not tell him of. Then the
wave of fear would come on him again. And he remembered his
mother's voice as she spoke to him earlier that day: "You'll see. She
won't stand for it." Partly out of curiosity, partly to satisfy his mother's
request, he decided to hide the crucifix in the room as his mother had
asked him.

When Marianne went to the bathroom, George placed the small
crucifix under her mattress. No sooner had Marianne returned and sat
on the edge of the bed than she turned white as chalk and fell rigidly
to the floor, where she lay jerking her pelvis back and forth as though
in great pain. In seconds the expression on her face had changed from
dreamy to almost animal; she foamed at the mouth and bared her
teeth in a grimace of pain and anger.

George ran out and called her parents on a pay phone. They arrived
about three-quarters of an hour later, bringing the family doctor with
them. That night they took Marianne back to their home in upper
Manhattan.

There followed weeks of nightmare for her parents and George.
They now had full access to her. She lay in what the doctor loosely
described as a coma. She would, however, wake up irregularly, take a
little nourishment, fall into paroxysms of growling and spitting, was
always incontinent and had to be washed continually, and finally
would lapse back into the strange comatose state.

Sometimes they would find her wandering around the room in the
middle of the night, stumbling over the furniture in the darkness, her
face frozen into a horrible smile. Drugs and alcohol were ruled out as
causes of her condition. Hospitalization was considered and rejected.
Although she was undernourished, their doctor and a colleague of his
could find nothing organically wrong and no trace of disease or injury.

From the beginning, her father insisted that their parish priest come

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 59

to their home where Marianne now lay, but each visit was cata-
strophic. It was as if she knew in advance the priest was coming. She
had terrifying fits of rage and violence. She would awaken, endeavor to
attack the priest, pour out a stream of obscenity, tear her own skin, try
to jump out their fifteenth-story window, or start battering her head
against the wall.

There were constant disturbances. The door of her room would
never stay either open or shut; it was continually banging to and fro.
Pictures, statues, tables, windowpanes, crockery were regularly frag-
mented and crushed. It was, finally, all this, plus the unbearable and
constant stench, that sent her mother and brother to Church
authorities. No matter how she was washed and deodorized, and the
room scoured and cleaned, it always smelled of sodden filth and a
putrefaction unknown to them. All this, together with Marianne's
extreme violence when a rosary or a crucifix was put to her lips,
convinced her family finally that her illness was more than physical or
mental.

When Peter arrived in New York in mid-August, he was given a
short briefing. He insisted on two preliminary visits and examinations;
during these, there was surprisingly no violence. First, he accompanied
two doctors, chosen by him, on a visit to Marianne. She cooperated
fully with them. On the second visit, he had an experienced
psychiatrist with him. This expert prolonged his examinations for two
or three weeks, taking copious notes, tape-recording conversations,
discussing the case with colleagues, questioning her parents and
friends. His conclusion was that he could not help her. He recom-
mended another colleague of his. After a hypnosis session, more
lengthy conversations with Marianne, and relying as well on the results
of drug therapy, his colleague pronounced Marianne normal within
the definition of any psychological test or understanding.

It was the beginning of October before Peter felt he could be
morally sure he had a genuine case of possession in Marianne, and that
he could safely proceed with the exorcism. He planned to start it early
on a Monday morning. Beforehand, he chose his assistants and then
spent many hours schooling them as to how they should act, what to
do, and what not to do during the ritual of Exorcism. Their chief
function was to restrain Marianne physically. Peter had a younger
priest as his chief assistant; he had to monitor Peter's actions, warn
him if mastery of the situation were slipping from him, correct any

60 THE CASES

mistakes he might make, and — in Peter's words — "poleaxe me and
carry on in my place if I make the ultimate mistake." All the assistants
were given one absolute rule: never say anything in direct response to
what Marianne might say.

Late on the Sunday evening preceding his Monday morning
appointment at Marianne's home, as Peter sat chatting after dinner
with some friends, he received a frantic call for help from George.
Marianne's condition was worse than ever before. She raged around
the apartment, screaming Peter's name. There had been a series of
disturbances in the house that still continued unabated. And they were
beginning to spread beyond the family's apartment. Not only were the
neighbors complaining; his parents had already been the victims of
some freak accidents. The situation was getting out of hand.

Peter left immediately, and arrived at the apartment some time past
midnight. He set about preparing for immediate start of the exorcism.
His assistants had already arrived. He did not approach Marianne's
room. Under his directions, they entered, stripped the bedclothes from
the bed, placed Marianne on a blanket thrown on the mattress. She
made no resistance, but lay on her back, her eyes closed, moaning and
growling from time to time. They stripped the carpet from the floor,
and removed all but two pieces of furniture. Peter needed a small
night table for the candlesticks, the crucifix, and his prayer book. The
tape recorder was placed in a chest of drawers. The windows were
closed securely and the blinds drawn. It was after 3:30 a.m. before all
was ready for the exorcism.

The four assistants gathered around Marianne's bed in the little
room. The only light came from the candles on the night table. Around
them wafted the stale stench that marked Marianne's presence; even
the little balls of cottonwool dipped in an ammonia solution which
they had placed in their nostrils did not kill that smell. Occasionally,
the honking of a car or the scream of a police siren sounded in their
ears from the streets below. None of them felt at ease, The centerpiece
of this scene, Marianne, lay motionless on the bed.

When Peter entered wearing black cassock, white surplice, and
purple stole, Marianne tried to turn away from where he stood at the
foot of the bed, but two of his assistants held her down flat. There was
no violence until he held up the crucifix, sprinkled her with holy
water, and said in a quiet voice: "Marianne, creature of God, in the
name of God who created you and of Jesus who saved you, I command

ZICKS FRIEND AND THE SMILER 6l

you to hear my voice as the voice of Jesus' Church and to obey my
commands."

Not even he and certainly not his assistants were prepared for the
explosion that followed.

Catching them all unawares, Marianne jerked free, and sat bolt
upright on the bed. Opening her mouth in a narrow slit, she emitted a
long, wailing howl which seemed to go on without pause for breath
and in full blast for almost a minute. Everyone was thrown back
physically by the force of that cry. It was not piteous, nor was it of
hurt or appeal. It was much more like what they imagined a wolf or a
tiger would sound like "when caught and disemboweled slowly," as
the ex-policeman described it. It was an embodiment in sound of
defiance and infinite pain. It confused and distressed them. Marianne's
father burst into tears, biting his lip to stifle his own voice; he wanted
to answer her. "One moment it made you afraid," said Peter's young
colleague in recalling the moment. "Another moment it made you cry.
Then you were shocked. So it went. It confused."

By the time she was silent, they had recovered and had her pinned
down again. She did not resist. The smile was back on her mouth,
twisting her lips into a corkscrew shape. She was very cold to the
touch. Her body was still, relaxed. The first words that came from her
were calm:

"Who are you? Do you come to disturb me? You do not belong to
the Kingdom. Yet, you are protected. Who are you?"

THE SMILER

Father Peter looked up from the exorcism text. "Funny," he thought,
"I should be sweating." His palms were dry, and his mouth. He
glanced at the girl. Her eyes were closed, but her eyeballs were
obviously moving beneath her lids as if she were caught in animated
conversation. That smile still lay across her lips like a curled whip. Her
head was now turned slightly to one side as if listening.

"Marianne!" He said it in a half- whisper, not finding his voice easily.
No answer. Silence for about ten seconds. Then, this time command-
ingly: "Marianne!"

"Why curse your gentle heart" — Marianne's words were spoken
softly — "I am now of the Kingdom. Didn't you know?" A pause. "So,

62 THE CASES

please hump off." Another pause. "With little Zio." A little laugh.
Then: "Betcha he doesn't know how to hump, fella!"

The edge of her teeth appeared like a white curve behind the lips.
The crow's-feet melted away from around her eyes. The whole
expression hardened. ''Unless . . . unless . . . unless you want to play
socket to my hammerrrrrrr . . ," Her words had come out all slurred
and on one breath but with no noticeable lip movement. Peter could
hear the end of that lungful of air as the prolonged "r" died away like
an echo into nothingness.

The four assistants stirred and looked at each other. The bank
manager, now perspiring freely, felt for the waxen pads in his ears to
reassure himself they were still there. James, the younger priest,
caught his breath and was about to speak when Marianne spoke again,
this time in a husky voice.

"Sorry, Peter." She sounded just like a lover who had kissed a little
too violently, was sorry, but might bite again if disappointed.

"Marianne!" This time insistingly. The name acted like the pull of
invisible wires. Her body became rigid. Her head was flat on the bed,
face to the ceiling; the eyeballs turned up behind the eyelids were still;
the skin, marbleized and utterly smooth, looked ten years younger. For
all the world, this was a teenage student listening intently to her
professor. Except for the smile.

"Lechah venichretha verith. " * The Hebrew words came off her lips
quite intelligibly to Peter. "A deal," she continued, "just you, Peter,
and me. Peter the Eater."

A window opened in Peter's memory releasing a small sharp panic
in him. It was like a bat zigzagging at him out of the night of memory.
And like a grain of grit thrown in his eye and stinging him to tears.
"Don't worry. No one will know it. Only me." Mae's face and voice
were back with him for an instant from that distant summer evening.
They were so dear in his memory. But Marianne's voice seaped the
memory to ashes.

"A deal, Peter! Let's talk of the Un in the All-Holy. Aleph. Beth.
Gimel. Daleth. Shin. Forget your Hebrew in all that hair and skin?"
The tone was level, throaty, neither male nor female, grittily mocking.
The grain of panic in Peter now became a boulder pushing him against
the bars of his mind, as he sought refuge. He remembered the neat
trap, and the words of old Conor: "Nivir discuss, me bhoy. Nick's a

* "Come! Let's make a deal."

ZIO'S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 63

pahst mahsther at it. He'll have yeh bet in wan tick uv a lamb's tail."

Peter made a new effort at mental control. His panic receded.
"Marianne!"

But the Pretense continued. "Tschah! Peter! What's a little Hebrew
between you and me?" The voice was less throaty now, appealing,
even.

'In the name of Jesus, I command you, Marianne, to answer."

"Why can't we forget the past? You forget it. I forget it. So
everybody's happy, Peter."

"Marianne, you belong to the Most High . . ."

"Forget it, Peter!" The hard note again. "Don't be a bore. This is, is,
is Marianne. The real Marianne . . ."

"Marianne, we love you, and we know you. Jesus knows you. God
knows you. Answer me in the name of Jesus who saved you."

"If you're thinking of that little pimply girl with no breasts and
heavy glasses and her silver cross and her calloused knees ..."

"Only love can save and heal, Marianne." Peter knew that
confrontation was being avoided, and the voice of Pretense went on.

"... and her no-mother-yes-mother-no-father-yes-father-bless-me-
father-for-I-have-sinned. Forget it, Peter." The throaty tone had
returned; but there was a silky snarl laced with contempt and, Peter
felt, some tiny threat.

A sound caught Peter's ear. Marianne's father was shaking and
looking at the chest of drawers. For the last 17 hours, that chest of
drawers had never stayed in exactly the same place. This had not been
too disturbing. But now it rocked back and forth at irregular intervals;
the brass handles rattled.

"Throw some holy water on that thing," Peter whispered to his
colleague. He heard some short hissing sounds like drops of water
falling on a red-hot stove.

But — even as quickly as that — the initiative had been taken out of
Peter's hands. He had been distracted by her father's reactions and his
own whispered order.

"Peter? You okay?" She had a mocking solicitude in her tones. The
rattling had ceased. "About that Un. What's the difference?"

Peter clenched his teeth and decided to be assertive. "The
All-Holy," he said flatly, "is one."

"Ah! But to be complete, the All-Unholy goes with it."

"Dirt does not go with cleanliness."

"Without darkness, no light, Peter. No light."

64 THE CASES

"The All-Holy cannot go with the All-Unholy."

"Wrong, Peter pet, pet Peter."

Peter's mental grip weakened for an instant, as he felt the claws of
argument closing around his mind. Fatally his logic rose. Conor's
warning faded in a kind of cry to intellectual battle, and he blurted
out: "Impossible — "

"Now, we're on the ball." Her voice rose, cut in triumphantly. "I
know your fuddy-duddy medieval Principle of Contradiction. Esse et
non-esse non possunt identiftcari.* Even know the Latin! But that's for
now, Peter. See? Only for now. It can be different."

Peter forced himself away from argument.

"Marianne!"

"No, Peter . . ."

"In the name . . ."

"Of the All-Unholy and, if you wish, the All-Holy. No objection."
Then that terrible little laugh. "Some day soon, your esse and your
non-esse will go together like . . ."

". . . of Jesus, Marianne . . ."

". . . a cock in a cunt, like a hand in a glove. Mine do . . . did . . .
will . . ."

Suddenly she vibrated in a high-pitched scream, shoulders, hips,
thighs, feet, hands, all beating against the hands that held her down,
like a woman driven to insanity with caresses but cut short of orgasm:
"Will somebody fuck me, fuck the esse out of my ass, Peter. Put your
esse in me and fuck me, fuck me." She ended in a forlorn wail.

Marianne's uncle gasped for air, as if throttled by a blow across the
throat. Peter's eardrums ached from that scream. He almost felt the
hot tears of her father, who was now crying quietly, biting his lips as
he held his daughter down.

Peter knew: the Pretense was wearing thin; something had to give.
But they were not yet in sight of the Breakpoint.

Suddenly Marianne went limp. The men relaxed their grip on her
and stood back. A high color crept into her cheeks. The voice that
came from her throat now was youngish, full of interest, calm, as
though reciting a lesson, cascading with soft syllables. As she spoke,
her head moved from side to side, eyes closed. The whip-smile was
now a coy kitten playing around the corners of her mouth.

"I have been on a simple quest. You see. No harm to anybody. Not

"Being and nonbeing cannot be one and the same."

ZIO'S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 65

even to myself. Only, I wanted to end all the painful choosing.
Mummy and Daddy could not help me. Nor my teachers. Nor
boyfriends. All of them were split with decisions. All of them tortured
by their choices. Afraid. Yes. You see? They were afraid. Had fears.
Like dogs yapping at their heels. Is this right? Is this happy? Is this
possible? Is this impossible? Miles and miles of yapping mongrel
questions. I knew if I found my real self, there would be no more need
to respond to choices and therefore no more fear of error. No more
guilt."

Peter understood there was no hope of arresting this flow of her
speech. She was eluding him now by a stratagem of logical talk into
which he could not enter without closing steel jaws around his mind. It
would be all over. Fatally. The only way of "teasing" her out of this
tricky stage of the Pretense was by an equally sustained flow of talk in
direct contradiction to the sense of what she was saying.

For long minutes and at various stages, Peter and Marianne
responded as if chanting antiphonal psalms, one taking up where the
other left off. But there was no sequence or logical connection
between what each was saying. The only point on which he
endeavored to match her was the manner of speaking. When she
whispered, he whispered. When she shouted, he shouted. When she
murmured, he murmured. When she interrupted, he interrupted her.
When she was silent, he fell silent. If one could have visualized their
struggle at this phase, it would have been like a surrealistic slow-
motion Olympic wrestling match in which the contestants strove with
each other's shadow, while all colors and actions faded into blurry
grayness, and scores were kept by a referee never seen or heard but
felt as a sure and eerie presence.

"Possible and impossible," Marianne cooed, "make all human
happenings impossible, posing suppurating distinctions and pat parti-
sanships and perfunctory periods ..."

"If a man has any love for me," Peter read, "he will be true to my
word." He was battering against the confusion, the numbing use of
words that lulled the mind toward nothingness. "And then he shall
love my Father; and we will both come to him and make our abode
with him . . ."

". . . in between us and our other halves," Marianne interrupted.
"Saying to the Yin in me: Thou shalt not have thine Yang. Saying to
the Yang in you: Thou shalt not have a Yin ..."

Peter cut Marianne off again. "The branch that does not live on in

66 THE CASES

the vine can yield no fruit of itself/' The very simplicity of the words
gave Peter new blood. His voice was calm. "No more than you . . ."

". . . making a male the creature of his dangling ganglions,"
screamed Marianne violently, "and a female the bed of her clit and her
clots and her ..."

". . . if you do not live on in me," Peter said at the top of his voice.
"I am the vine; you, its branches; if a man lives on in me, and I, in him,
then he . . ."

". . . torn by womb." Marianne was now snarling the words in a
hoarse yell. "He out. She in. And never the twain shall meet except in
sweat and groans. Ugh! For out's out ..." Now Marianne blew out a
great gust of air at the candles on the night table at the foot of the bed.
The young priest shielded them with the cupped palms of his hands.

Peter would not disengage. He went on, still knifing at the
confusion, the verbal expression of the stink in the room, using the
words that kept him free. ". . . will yield abundant fruit; separated
from me, you have no power to . . ."

". . . and in's in," she broke across him. "This cut-and-dried
business started long ago with all that crap of master and slave,
creature and creator, god and man. The whole cotton-pickin',
mother-fuckin' ..."

". . . anything," Peter continued imperturbably with his text. "If a
man does not live on in me. he can only ..."

"... winners-and- losers game." She paused slightly for a moment,
as if listening, "The fella in that white robe with that camp-following
whore and her vaseline. And then for us . . ."

She broke off. Her eyes opened and she sat up in bed. The
ex-policeman and the bank manager, fearing violence, reached for her
arms. But there was none. Father James thought of the old lithograph
of Jesus and Mary Magdalen that hung in the rectory.

"Yeah, my young eunuch. That's him and her," said Marianne,
laughing and looking at James crookedly and conspiratorially.

But Peter's voice recalled the stunned James to reality.

". . . be like the branch that is cast off and withers away. Such a
branch is . . ."

"Mother Mary Maidenhead Virgilius announced that the impossible
can't be possible." Marianne was lying back once more on the bed.
"You're telling us, we all chorused at her . . ."

Peter caught the sardonic tone. His voice went hard as he cut her off.

ZIO'S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 67

". . . useless and cast into the fire, to burn there. I pray for those
who are to find faith in me through their word; that they may be all
one; that they too may be one in us, as thou, Father, art in me, and
I . . ."

". . . withered boobs and remembering her fallen womb and her
pasty complexion at curse time every month/' Marianne's voice was
once again rising to a falsetto. "If only you had known, Mother dear!
The impossible isn't . . ."

Marianne was chuckling. Peter kept the hard note in his tone, as he
took up where she had cut him off: ". . . in thee; so that the world
may believe that it is thou who has sent me."

Still talking, Marianne now turned over on her side, relaxed. While
she spoke, the doctor took her pulse as he was supposed to do every
quarter of an hour, when her movements didn't make this too difficult.

". . . possible unless the impossible is actual. Otherwise the
impossible would be impossible. Must be really impossible, though.
Really/ 7 Her tone was confidential. "For the possible to be possible, I
mean. Must have both. Must have . . ."

Peter's voice sank low and vibrant: "This is my commandment that
you should love one another, as I have loved you. This is the
greatest ..."

They all jerked to attention: Marianne's body had become rigid as a
plank of wood. She was still talking: ". . . both." Now her words ran
ahead of him. He looked up, listening and watching for any telltale
sign that the Breakpoint was upon them. She continued feverishly.

"The real is real because of the unreal. The clean, clean because of
the unclean. The full, full because of the empty. The perfume,
perfume because of the smelly. The holy, holy because of the unholy."
Then in an intense rush of words interspersed with grunts intent on
hammering home contradictions, in an unholy pursuit of all that could
confuse and confound human thought and open blankness in the
mind: "Sweet sweet huh bitter. What is is huh what isn't. Life life huh
death." Each grunt preceded an opposite and sounded as though
Marianne were being punched in the stomach each time. "Pleasure
pleasure huh pain. Hot hot huh cold." Then in a chain of words pasted
together in a scream: "Updoumfatthinhighlowhardsoftlongshortlight-
darknesstopbottominsideoutsidealleachalleachaUeachchchchch^
ch ..." The piping voice died away on that long, coagulated
mishmash as if choking on its breath. The effort had been so violent

68 THE CASES

that Marianne seemed to be almost plucked off the bed, every part of
her prone body straining upward,

Peter resumed his reading evenly. "I have no longer much time for
conversation with you. One is coming, who has power over the world,
but no hold over me. Now is the time when the Prince of this world is
to be cast out . . ." He paused in the middle of the sentence and
looked at Marianne.

She was still lying rigid, her legs apart, hands on her crotch. A low
whispered growl started in her throat and parted her lips.

Peter started to whisper: "Yes, if only I am lifted up from the earth,
I will attract all men to myself." He stopped, no longer hearing that
growl.

Marianne's body relaxed. She rolled over jerkily on her other side. In
a girlish voice, a seemingly instantaneous departure in a new direction:
"Binaries, we need them, y'know? Yessir. Cybernetics has 'em. Before
and after. Plus and minus. Odd and even. Negative and positive.
Always to be with us. But just as far as that: with us. Not splitting us."

Peter would not be pulled aside or try to follow any sense of
Marianne's words. That same trap, that constant, easy invitation to
defeat. He took up again: "He who rules this world has had sentence
passed on him already. The spirit will bring honor to me because it is
from me . . ."

"He who is not with me," she took up, interrupting in a dreadfully
mocking falsetto, "is against me, sez the Lord. No man can serve two
masters, sez the Lord." Lowering her tone: "Ever see two pricks in the
ass and cunt of one broad and she pumping back and forth servicing
two masters?" Her father turned his face away and leaned on the
policeman's shoulder.

Again the falsetto: "Whom do men say I am? sez he. Black and
white, sez he." Now the falsetto rose to a howl that pierced the ears of
Peter and the others, making them wince and grimace: "You're in, sez
he. You're out, sez he. The Lord God of Ghosts. Sheep 'n' goats, sez
he. Doves and devils, sez he. Golden clouds and bloody brimstone.
Driving a nail in the heart. Opening up a gaping wound in my
oneness." Then, raising her pelvis up and down rhythmically and
shouting at the top of her voice: "Jeebum! Jeebum! Jeebum! Jeebum!"

". . . the Father belongs to me," said Peter calmly, finishing his
interrupted sentence.

Marianne stopped as Peter said those words. Now he was standing
by the window but facing into the room and watching Marianne on

Zio's FRIEND AND THE SMILER 69

the bed. She whimpered piteonsly: "All I want is no more questions.
No more challenges. No more choices. No more yesses and noes. Not
even maybes. No thou-shalt-nots. In the Kingdom ..." Then in a
suddenly deep gurgle like a man who needs no air but speaks through
gallons of water ". . . in the Kingdom in the Kingdom in the
Kingdom . . ."

Every instinct in Peter drummed at him to put pressure on her. He
felt that the Pretense was almost over, that Marianne's revolt against
possession would break out now, and that the evil occupying her
would be forced to fight openly to retain its hold.

Peter moved quietly to Marianne's side, still looking for the telltale
signs on her face. If the Breakpoint were near, then all expression
should be absent; and there should be queer and unnaturally crooked
lines. Sure enough, the face was a frozen mask grained with stark lines.
Silence.

"Father, is she going to come out of it?" It was Marianne's father.

Peter ignored the question. Put the pressure on, his instinct told
him. Now! Fast!

"Jesus, Marianne. The name is ..."

"Jeebum! Jesusass! Jeebum! Jesusass! Jeebum!" She was howling
again. Peter wanted desperately to cover his ears against the slivers of
pain that pierced his brain.

"Watch it!" he shouted to his assistants as he saw her two
forefingers shoot into her nostrils and begin tearing at them. He
jumped to her side again. "Pin her down!"

Every pair of hands clamped down on her. They held on. Each one
had his own memory of some wild animal: a tiger in a zoo cage, a
hyena lowering at another hyena, a sow fighting the hands at a
slaughterhouse. The sides of Marianne's mouth were pulled back — it
seemed the grimace stretched to her ears — baring teeth, gums, tongue.
A grayish foam bubbled and seeped over her lower lip and down her
chin. Her eyes were open but rolled up so far that they saw only white,
red-streaked patches glistening wet. Two men pinned her arms to the
bed; one leaned on her belly; another held her legs still.

It seemed no human being could survive what Marianne was going
through. The doctor closed his eyes as his own perspiration stung into
them.

"Hold on, for the love of God," Peter said.

The muffled "zheeeeeeeeeee" buzzing between her teeth died away
to nothing. Her eyelids closed. "Stay put," muttered the ex-policeman,

70 THE CASES

"she's still all tight." The doctor lifted one of Marianne's eyelids, then
let it fall shut again.

Peter had won. The Pretense had failed. But it was many hours after
the start, and only the end of round one. He recited the second part of
the Exorcism ritual, while his assistants stood back watching.

As always before, the Breakpoint came at the precise moment Peter
least expected it. It started with a sound difficult to describe. A horse
whimpering. A dog whinnying. A man meowing. It was the very sound
of pain. Of nature violated by unnature. Of deep agony. Of protest. Of
helplessness. "Supposing a cadaver, after the death rattle and after the
grimacing of the last breath was over, started to cry for help, what do
you imagine it would sound like?" Peter asked later in an effort to
describe this indescribable sound. "Or supposing when you were
closing his dead eyelids with your thumb and forefinger" (he made the
motion with spatular fingers) "and supposing you missed one eye, and
it looked up at you still glassy and dead — you know how they
look — and it filled with genuine tears. That's the feeling. Something
reaching out from the middle of all the worms and putrid flesh and
stink and body water and silent immobility of death, saying: 'I'm alive!
Pull me out! For the love of Jesus, save me!' That was Marianne when
the Breakpoint began. The tug of war for her soul that nearly broke
me in two."

Now, Peter felt, he could appeal directly to Marianne and aid her.
He started to read the first part of another "teaser text" slowly.

"Marianne. You were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. You belong to Jesus. It was the sacrifice of his life
that made it possible for you to belong to God. Whatever of beauty, of
love, of kindness, of gentleness there was in you — all came from Jesus.
He knows you, knows every fiber of your being, is more than a friend,
nearer than your mother, more loving than any lover, more faithful to
you than you yourself can be. Speak! Speak! Speak out! And tell me
you are listening. Speak and tell me you want to be saved in the name
of Jesus who saved you and in the name of God who created you.
Speak!"

Looking over the top of the book, he could see her hands relaxing
and being placed at her sides by his assistants. The ear-to-ear grimace
faded. Her eyes were open but still turned up so far that you felt she
was looking into her own eye sockets. The whites of her eyes glistened.
There was complete silence. The doctor took her pulse. "She's as cold

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER Jl

as ice." "Okay, okay," Peter answered the doctor, with a motion of his
head, never taking his gaze off Marianne.

Marianne's whole body was limp now. It looked heavy, sodden with
fatigue. A faint bluish coloration gave an eerie appearance to her
hands, arms, feet, neck, and face. All was still. He heard breathing: his
own, his assistants'. Marianne's he could not hear.

The doctor reported a faint pulse. "She's very low, Peter," he said.
Peter held up his hand restraining further comment. The moments
ticked by. Her father cleared his throat and brushed his eyes: "It's
over, Father?" Peter silenced him with a quick, almost rude shake of
his head. He watched, waiting for the slightest change. "If it's going to
happen, it's now," he said half to himself, half-aloud; "Keep watch-
ing."

But with the intolerable strain of silence, he felt the muscles in his
calves, back, and arms relaxing. His grip loosened on his book. His
head began to straighten up. The younger priest unfolded his arms. A
radio blared in a downstairs apartment. Gradually the silence took
over as a welcome blanket wrapping itself around their ears and
swaddling the entire room. It gave an uneasy feeling to find oneself
getting lost in that silence after the shouting, the discordancy, and the
lethal sound of the gurgling voice Marianne had used.

The pain began to ease in Peter's mind. Still gazing at Marianne's
face, he thought of Conor in Rome, of Zio — now Paul VI — in New
York. And he thought of sleep. He glanced at his watch. It was 9:25
p.m, Mass at Yankee Stadium should almost be finished. This ordeal in
the room should also be finished soon. Soon, hopefully, they could all
go home and sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep.

Sleep? Through the settling haze of his fatigue, the thought
triggered Peter's memory. Hadn't Conor warned him that sleep,
sleepiness, the desire to rest, sometimes came as a last trap, usually
preceding a last onslaught of the Presence?

But he was a few moments too late. As Conor's phrase lit up like a
red signal in his memory: "Moind the sleeperrr, lad. Moind the
sleeperrr! Tis all up wid yah, if yeh fergit the sleeperrr!", it was
already upon him.

It was sudden, And yet the Presence seemed as if it had been
clutching at him for ages beforehand, already had a hold on the vitals
of his being. His body shuddered as he whispered, "Jesus! Jesus!"

The others heard only a groan from him and thought that he had
tried to say something without having cleared his throat.

72 THE CASES

"Okay, Father?" asked the doctor.

Peter gestured wearily with his hand. This fight was all his. The
others would be unknowing witnesses.

The Presence was everywhere and nowhere. Peter fought off the
instinct to step back or to look around or, most of all, to run far and
fast. "Freeze yer moind," had been Conor's advice. "Freeze it in luv.
Shtick there, lad." But, Holy Jesus! how? The Presence was all over
him, inside him, outside him. A total trap of cloying ropes he couldn't
see. He heard no word, saw no vision, smelled no odor. But his skin
was no longer the protective shell of his mortality. His skin didn't
work! It was now a porous interface that let the invisible filth of the
Presence ooze in. Worst of all was the silence of it. It was soundless.
Suddenly he had been attacked and caught; and he knew his adversary
was superior and ruthless, that it had invaded deep into the self he
always hid from others and hoped only God did know and would
never show him until he was strong enough to bear the sight.

He could not discern where the struggle lay. His confusion of mind
was like molasses oozing over spiders, paralyzing every effort at
control and every natural movement. Sometimes it seemed his will was
made of rubber twisted this way and that and cruelly snapping back at
his mind like a wet towel smacking the face. Sometimes his mind was a
sieve through which stinging particles tumbled, each one tabbed with
a jeering name: Despair! Dirt! Smell! Puny! Mush! Misery! Mockery!
Hate! Beast! Shame! . . . There was no end to them. At other times,
he realized, his mind and will were only exits, sewage pipes; and his
imagination was the recipient of what they vomited. Out through
them were pouring the shapes of the real struggle that lay in another
dimension of himself. Deep down? High up? Conscious? Unconscious?
Subconscious? He did not know. But certainly somewhere in the
depths of the self he was. All the hidden valleys of that self were red
with his agony. Every high peak was a sharp slope of tumbling
confusion. Each plain and corner was crammed with pressure and
weight and sorrow. His imagination was now a cesspool swelling with
gobs of repulsive images and twisted fears.

"I'm alone," he thought, covering his face with his hands for an
instant.

"Yes! Alone! Alone! Alone! Alone!" came the answer in silent
mockery.

It seemed to be himself answering himself with a blasphemy as
primal as the scream of the first man who murdered another man, and

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 73

as actual as the grunt of the latest mugger on that same October night
driving his knife deep into the back of his victim on Lenox Avenue.

"Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!" Peter exclaimed within himself. "Oh, God!
Oh, Jesus! I'm finished . . ."

Then, as suddenly as it had come, and for no reason he could
discern, the Presence receded from him; but it did not leave
altogether. Peter felt as if extended claws pricked themselves loose out
of his flesh and mind and folded back unwillingly.

Without Peter's knowing, a small gale of consternation — a pale copy
of his own agony — buffeted his assistants all this time as they kept
troubled watch over Marianne.

Little patches of relief spotted Peters consciousness. His eyes
focused again. Over rims of tears, he could now see her. She was a
body of trembling. It seemed that everything beneath her skin and hair
and clothes was moving in unnatural agitation, arhythmically, but that
her exterior remained somehow still. Her mouth opened a fraction.
The lips moved wordlessly.

And then, for the third time in his life, Peter heard the Voice.

It came from nowhere. It merely sounded; it was audible to Peter
and all present, but it did not come from any discernible direction. It
was everywhere in the room, but nowhere in particular. It was level in
tone, slow in speed, without any trace of breathing or any pause. Not
high-pitched. Not deep. Not throaty. Not tinny or nasal. Not male. Not
female. Accentless. Controlled. Peter had once seen a film about a
talking robot; when the robot uttered a word, each syllable, as it was
pronounced, was followed by eddies of gurgling echoes of itself. The
echoes muddied the next syllable; and so it went on for the syllables of
each word in a sentence.

The Voice was something like that, but in reverse: the eddying
echoes of each syllable preceded the syllable itself. To the listener, it
was excruciating to understand but impossible to blot out. It was
distracting and dizzying. The effect was like a million voices stabbing
the eardrum with nonsensical confusion and clamor, preechoing each
syllable. You tried to pick out one voice, almost succeeded, then
another piled on top of that; you tried to pick out another, but the first
one came back at you. And so on, seeming scores of persistent voices
exasperating you, confusing you, defeating you. Then the Voice
pronounced the syllable; and your confusion was complete with
frustration, for the syllable and the word were drowned in the general
babel.

74 THE CASES

Like most people, Peter had acquired the knack of "reading" voices.
We all develop such an instinct and have our own classification of
voices as pleasant or unpleasant, strained or peaceful, male or female,
young or old, strong or weak, and so on. The Voice fitted into no
category Peter could think of. "Unhuman I suppose you'd call it," he
said later. "But it was the same as in Hoboken and Jersey City. With
the added touch, of course."

The "added touch" was his way of indicating the peculiar timbre of
the Voice at each exorcism. In Hoboken as in Jersey City the timbre
conveyed some violent and shocking emotion that aroused fear. But
the timbre in the Voice that October night was different. "For all the
world," said Peter, "as if the Great Panjandrum himself was speaking,
and all the little panjandrums pronounced each syllable before he did.
His precursors, if you wish."

The timbre, the "added touch," conveyed a single message: utter
and undiluted superiority. It didn't hit the emotions, but the mind,
freezing it with a realization that there was no possibility and could
never be any possibility of besting it; that its owner knew this, and that
he knew you also knew; and that this superiority was neither
sweetened by compassion nor softened by an ounce of love nor eased
by a grain of condescension nor restrained by one whit of benignity
toward one of lesser stature. "If sound can be evil, with no human
good in it all," said Peter, "that was it." It brought him up to the thin
edge of nothingness and face to face with the anus mundi, the ultimate
in excretion of self-aggrandizing sin.

Then the bedlam and confusion of the Voice died away as if into
some middle distance.

The four assistants lifted their heads, as Marianne's own voice was
heard speaking with heavy deliberateness, almost quietly, in compari-
son with the preceding uproar.

"Nobody mortal has power in the Kingdom. Anybody can belong to
it." A short pause. "Many do." Each word had come out polished,
precise, weighty, and clear as a newly minted gold dollar tossed onto a
bar counter.

Time for the final assertion, thought Peter. His final shot. The trump
card of every exorcism: the power of Jesus and his authority.

"By the authority of the Church and in the name of Jesus, 1
command you to tell me what I shall call you."

Peter kept his voice level as he issued the challenge. All his hopes

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 75

rested on the acceptance of that challenge. Rejected, the challenge
could only result in further distortions of Marianne. At this stage, Peter
knew she could not take much more. But there could be no turning
back now. And to break off was total defeat. He could feel the
nervousness in his assistants: all and everything in the room reflected
the tension of the moment. Peter knew, and each one present knew,
he had issued a final challenge.

"You command!" Now Marianne sounded amused, as though Peter
had told a joke. He kept reminding himself that this was not Marianne,
but the spirit using her voice. Still his heart sank a little. "I am us," he
heard her say. "We are me. Isn't is? Aren't are? What we are called is
beyond human mind."

We! Peter was riveted by that key word. Only those of the Kingdom
used it. Peter knew instantly that he was almost there and he had no
intention of allowing the Presence to identify again with Marianne, so
he broke in brusquely.

"There is no immunity for you and your kind in the universe of
being."

The calculated and cold ruthlessness, a new note in Peter's
interruption, brought the ex-policeman up sharp. Years of experience
had given him a sixth sense for lethal threat and attack, for hatred and
open disgust. He had heard many a cop speaking to arrested
murderers in that tone, and many a killer behind bars telling of his
hatred in as controlled a way as Peter was using now. He looked at
Peter's face. It had changed. Something subtly merciless had lodged
there.

Peter continued: "You, all of you, are . . ."

"You, you, you have no particular immunity, my friend." Marianne's
emphasis was exact as she broke in. Nicely calculated. Just heavy
enough to make one uneasy. Too light to betray any ripple of
annoyance or fear.

A vague uneasiness ran through Peter's assistants; they moved
spontaneously nearer him. The Presence was getting to them. For all
his instructions to them before the exorcism began, he knew there was
no way to prepare them for the shock, the fear, the onslaught.

Marianne's body was utterly still, her face pasty white, her lips
barely open. After a pause, her voice continued with the merest edge
of sharpness: "You may have polished your knee balls in a Confession
Box" — this with a sneering inflection — "but you were not sorry,

76 THE CASES

friend. Not always, anyway. So where is your repentance? And need I
tell you, priest, without repentance, you have sins still? And you! You
command the Kingdom?"

In his memory Peter heard Conor's caution: "What happened in
pahst histhoree, happened. The recorrd shtands. Ferivir. Loike a
shtone n a feeld, opin V maneefist. Fer awl teh see, me bhoy.
Incloodin' the Grate Panjandhr'm hissilf. No, don't deny it. Wallow in
humilitee."

"How shall we call you?" Peter persisted.

"We?" Sarcastically, but calmly.

"In the name of . . ."

"Shut your miserable mouth . . ." — it was suddenly an animal
growling the words. "Close it! Shut it! Lock it! Fuck it!"

". . . Jesus. Tell us: how shall we call you?"

Then a low, long cry came from Marianne's lips. All in the room
held their breath as the Voice gurgled and they made out the words
with difficulty: "I will take my toll. 1 will take our pound of flesh. All
142 pounds of him! I will take him with me, with us, with me!"
Complete silence. Then Marianne's voice: "Smiler. 1 just smile."

Peter glanced at her face. The name was obvious, now he knew it.
The twisted smile was back on her mouth. Now, he realized, he had to
deal with the most ancient of man's tempters and enemies: the hater
who deceived you with a smile and a joke and a promise.

The cleverness of it. How could you suspect or attack someone
called Smiler? And if they just smile at anything you do, what can you
do? The whole thing — God, heaven, earth, Jesus, holiness, good,
evil — becomes a mere farce. And by the evil alchemy of that farce,
everything becomes an ugly joke, a cosmic joke on little men who in
their turns are only puny little jokes. And, and, and . . . the utter
banality of all existence, the wish for nothing.

He wrenched his mind away from this dead blanket of depression
and concentrated again. This was the meeting point with Marianne.

"You, Smiler, you will leave, you shall leave this creature of
God . . ."

"This annoying affair has gone on long enough." The words had a
smirking quality overlaid with pomposity. "Marianne has made her
choice." Peter's inner reaction was: We are almost there. Marianne's
voice continued: "You understand better than these oafs do. After
all . . ."

"... because love is all there is needed . . ." Peter continued.

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 77

". . . her life is short, as is yours. She takes what she can, as
you . . ."

"Because love is all there is needed." Peter repeated himself. But
the monologue by Smiler went on uninterruptedly.

". . . take it with your arrogance."

"And you, Smiler, you rejected love." There was a sudden break in
the exchange. For a split second Peter waited. "We came from love,"
he started again. But that was as far as he got.

"LOVE!!!" The word was fired out at him like a pistol shot. The
assistants bent toward Marianne, expecting violence in the wake of
that shriek. Peter straightened up, not in suspense, not as though
expecting more. Conor had said never trade shouts but let outbursts
run their course.

But there was no more shouting. It was the violence of the loathing
in Marianne's voice that was physically painful to Peter, as it
continued on studiously and quietly: "Yes . . ."A trailing pause, as if
ruminating. Then: "Ah! Sixty-nine. Right? A handy image!"

Peter winced at the tone and the mental picture. His memory was
wilting his effort, and he prayed.

But Marianne went on with unruffled mercilessness as if reciting
from a technical report. "And first the tongue, its apex like a single wet
pink eye with a white iris, goes exploring: sliding its dorsum over each
groin, every epithelial cell registering the ripples of the musculus
gracilis, following the tautened adductor longus, summoning saliva to
glisten its course toward the darkling mountain, the mons veneris. Her
saphena majora rustles and tickles with rushing blood."

A retort rushed to Peter's mouth. He held it back.

Marianne continued. "Then, at the os pubis it lingers, all its papillae
hungry, tensile, wet. Filiform cries to fungiform, fungiform to
circumvallatae, circumvallatae to foliatae; 'On! Brothers! On!'

The doctor whistled through his teeth and glanced at Peter. But
Peter was dangerously abstracted from the scene. He could hear Mae's
sigh, that long-distant day in the sunshine, miles and decades apart
from this evil encounter; he could see her lying on the slope of the
sand dunes, felt one hand lying lightly on his belly. And then he had
the wisping image of her lying in her coffin just before it was closed
forever.

Inexorably the recital went on. "Amid his moans and her heaving,
the tickling in his sacrum (ah! Resurrection Bone! Those rabbis had a
word for it!), through his thighs; the corpus cavernosum fills up with

78 THE CASES

thick red-black blood. The tongue stabbing within, and she closing
around it, holding it.

Smiler was now using Marianne's voice in a soft, matter-of-fact tone.
There was a short pause of seconds. Then, with a burst of fierce
contempt:

"He is fucking her. And like the hyena with a dead deer" — the voice
rose to a scream — "he starts with her anus, and she like a mother snake
is swallowing her son. LOVE?????" A piercing, shattering scream. The
voice fell to a sneer: "Cunni-cunni-cunni-cunni-cunni! Peter the
Eater." Then casually, as one asks the time of day: "Tell us, Peter. Are
you sorry? Do you miss it?"

Marianne's father had his face buried in his hands; his shoulders
heaved with sobbing. The ex-policeman and the banker stared
red-faced at Peter. His young colleague leaned on the night table, his
face ashen. The tirade, like a great, sprawling canvas, had thrown a
mass of screaming colors and nonsensical patterns of thought and
feelings over them all.

The doctor reacted more quickly than the others: "Peter, can we
pause?" He was apprehensive, seeing the bloodless color of Peter's
face and a distracted look in his eyes. Peter gave no answer.

Smiler, the cosmic joker, smears and tears at everything, Peter was
thinking to himself, as he ruminated and groped toward his next step.
Smiler, who turns memories to dirt and chokes you with them. But
then he's not subtle. And he's not clever. Peter thought: This is either
a trap for us, or we have Smiler trapped. Which?

He found himself reacting by instinct: "Silence! Smiler! Silence in
the name of Jesus! I command you to desist, to leave her. Tell me that
you will obey, that you will leave her. Speak!"

The other men in the room glanced at Peter, surprised at the force
in his voice. The verbal assault had left them raw, ashamed of
something vague, with a feeling that they had been filthied. They had
expected Peter to wilt, to have been crushed. They had been willing to
lose hope.

But now they took something from him. They sensed what he knew,
saw it on his face, and almost heard him telling them: "I may be
engaged in this to my own humiliation. But Smiler is equally engaged
in it and there is no escape for him. Just hold on."

Smiler spoke, but as if Peter had never spoken. "Well! Here we have
a thing never seen in the Kingdom" — the voice calm again — "a little
drop of sea water pulls a little membrane around it and rots for a

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 79

million years on an ancient, forgotten shore, and sprouts little
hair-trigger nerves and puny little earthen mechanisms, and stands up
on two spindly limbs one day, and says, 'I am a man,' and lifts its snout
to skies above and says again, 'I am so beautiful' ..."

"Silence! Desist!"

"You ugly sod! You smelly little animal . . ."

"And let the soul of Marianne be beautiful once more with the
grace of . . ."

"Beautiful?" For the first time, the voice was raised almost an
octave higher. "Beautiful?" Now it was a shrill, high-pitched, and
painful scream of questioning scorn. "You helpless, yelping, puking,
licking, slavering, sweating, excreting little cur. You whipped mongrel.
You constipated shit canister. You excuse for a being. You lump of
urine and excrement and snot and mud born in a bed on bloody sheets,
sticking your head out between a woman's smelly legs and bawling
when they slapped your arse and laughed at your little red balls" — the
scream of high-decibel invective ceased suddenly, followed by three
syllables pronounced calmly and with loathing contempt — "You
creature!"

"And so are you, too. You creature." Peter surprised himself at his
own self-possession: his adversary had made a mistake, and Peter knew
it. Peter also surprised himself with the contempt he found himself
putting in to his riposte.

He continued: "Once nothing. Then beautiful. The most beautiful
of all God made." The bitter taunt in Peter's voice turned every head
but Marianne's in his direction. He went on lashing and provoking.
"Then ugly with pride. Then conquered. Then thrown from the
heights like a dying torch."

A low roar issued from Marianne's mouth.

Peter went on unabashed; he had his adversary exactly where he
wanted him: "And expelled, and disgraced, and condemned, and
deprived forever, and defeated forever."

Marianne's body quivered.

"Hold her down!" he muttered to his assistants. Just in time. She
was shaking violently. The roar was now the bellow of a pig with a
knife gouging out its jugular in gobs of blood.

Peter piled it on: "You, too, creature of God, but not saved by Jesus'
blood."

Again the long, howling wail.

As its sound died away, Peter's whole body was electrified with fear.

80 THE CASES

At that instant the Presence launched its hate again. Like a physical
thing, it attacked him. It sent stinging talons into his mind and will,
stabbing deep at the root of his determination, at some inner sensitive,
delicate part of him where all his pain and all his pleasure lived.

This was the Clash that Conor had analyzed so well for Peter. This
was the climax of his one-to-one struggle. Peter made the sign of the
cross. He knew: now one of them had to yield; one would be victor.
He had to hold. He had to refuse to despair. Refuse disbelief. Refuse
damnation. Refuse fear. Refuse. Refuse. Refuse. Hold on. These came
like automatic commands to him from his inmost self.

His first desperate thrust was to switch his mind toward any
lifeline — any beauty or truth he had known and experienced: the cry
of seagulls off Dooahcarrig in Kerry; the rhythmic pattern of nimble
feet at winter dances; Mae's smile; the security of his father's house;
the calm summer evenings he had spent off the coast of Aran Island
looking at the Connemara mountains behind Calway City, purple
masses welling up in a shining gold vault of sky in haze.

But as quick as any image arose, it dried like a drop of water in a
flame. All his internal images of loyalty, authority, hope, legitimacy,
concern, gentleness shriveled and faded. His imagination was burning
with an overheated despair and his mind could not help him. Only his
will locked both mind and imagination into an immobility that pained
and agonized him.

But then the Presence turned silently on his will in a slash of naked
adversity. For the others present, there was little to go on: no sound
except Peter's heavy breathing and the shuffling of their legs as they
endeavored to keep their balance and hold Marianne down; no
sensation beyond the straining of Marianne's body against their hands.

The attack on Peter was a fury beating like sharp hailstones on a tin
roof, filling all his awareness with a ceaseless din of fears that
paralyzed his will and mind. If only he could breathe more easily, he
thought. Or if only he could pierce that contempt.

Dimly he saw the candles sputtering on the night table and glinting
on the crucified figure on the cross.

"Rimimb'r, lad, his proide. That's his weak heel. His proide! Git him
on his proide!"

With Conor's voice in his memory, Peter blurted: "You have been
vanquished, vanquished, Smiler, by one who did not fear to be lowly,
to be killed. Depart! Smiler! Depart! You have been vanquished by a
bloodied will. You cheat. Jesus is your master ..."

ZIO S FRIEND AND THE SMILER 01

The others present heard him croaking the words as they held
Marianne down on the bed. A babel set in: everyone was affected. The
chest of drawers rocked noisily back and forth, its handles clanked
discordantly. The door to the room swung and banged, swung and
banged, swung and banged. Marianne's body shirt split down the
middle, exposing her breasts and middle. Her jeans tore at the seams.
Her voice rose louder and louder in a series of slow, staccato screams.
Great welts appeared across her torso, groin, legs, and face, as if an
invisible horsewhip was thrashing her unmercifully. She struggled and
kicked and heaved and spat. Now she was incontinent, urinating and
excreting all over the bed, filling their nostrils with acrid odor.

Peter kept murmuring: "He vanquished you. He vanquished you.
He vanquished you . . ." But the pain in his will struggling against
that will began to numb him; and his throat was dry. His eyes blurred
over. His eardrums were splitting. He felt dirty beyond any human
cleansing. He was slipping, slipping, slipping.

"Jesus! Mary! . . . Conor," he whispered as his knees buckled, "it's
all lost, I can't hold. Jesus! . . ."

Seven thousand miles away across ocean and continent, in Rome,
the doctor nodded to the nurse as he stepped out of Father Conor's
room. He told the father superior there was no point in calling the
ambulance. The damage was too massive this time. It would be a
matter of mere hours.

It was Conor's third stroke. He had been fine all that evening. Then
in the small hours of the morning, he had called his superior on the
house phone from his room: "Fatherr, I'm goin' teh cause yeh throubel
agin." When they reached Conor, they found him slumped over his
desk, his right hand clutching a crucifix.

"Father, it's all right. It's me. It's all over."

Peter's younger colleague helped Peter to his feet. Peter had fallen
on his knees and bent over until his forehead touched the floor. By the
bed, Peter saw the doctor was listening to Marianne's heartbeat with a
stethoscope. Her father was stroking her hand and talking to her
through his tears: "It's all right, my baby. It's all right. You're through.
You're safe, baby. It's all right."

The bank manager had gone outside to talk with Marianne's mother
and brother. Marianne was quiet now, breathing regularly. The bed

82 THE CASES

was a shambles. The ex-policeman opened the window, and the sounds
of traffic entered the room. It was around 10:15 p.m.

"I must phone Conor early," Peter said to his colleague. Then, "I
wonder what else happened today?" He looked over at Marianne
again. "Zio's visit can't be all."

Father James looked at him dumbly, not catching the train of his
thought. He would never understand exorcists, he felt.

Then Peter continued: "Is it because love is one throughout the
world, and hate is one throughout the world?" Peter addressed the
seeming vague question to no one in particular.

The younger priest turned away from the pain he saw on Peter's
face; it was more than he could take just now. "I will get you some
coffee," he said brusquely, feeling the hot tears at the back of his own
eyes.

But Peter was looking out the window at the night sky. His mind
was far away, his senses almost asleep with fatigue.

Down below Marianne's window, the crowds were returning from
Yankee Stadium. Zio at that moment was standing in a darkened
gallery of the Vatican Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, gazing at
Michelangelo's Pietd: the dead Jesus in the arms of his mother.
Television cameras carried his voice to millions that night: "We bless
all of you, invoking upon you an abundance of heavenly blessings and

Father Bones
and Mister Natch

The marriage was to take place at 8:00 a.m. on the Massepiq seashore,
just around Dutchman's Point, New England. It was already a bright
and sunny March day at 7:30 a.m. as the first guests arrived. A
landward breeze, like the breath of the sun from the East, blew
clusters of white clouds across the blue morning sky and juggled the
sea with ripples. The tide, almost fully in and about to ebb, was like a
formless giant exhaling and inhaling. It sent wave after wave in an
unbroken flow to the long shoreline. Each one broke there with a
sharp tap on the sand, spread out a running tapestry of whitened water
with a rustling whisper, and then was sucked rasping back over sand
and pebbles.

This music of the waters and the thin piping of the wind was a quiet
but powerful rhythm that ebbed and flowed, uninterrupted by any
other sound. As the guests came, they fell under its spell. It was the
voice of a very ancient world that had always existed, always moved,
and now seemed to be putting them, the intruders, on notice: "This is
my world you have entered. But since this is the morning of man and
woman, my children, I will pause a while. This is a new beginning/'

It was, in fact, exactly the sort of morning that Father Jonathan had
hoped for. Everything was natural. The only perfume was the air, crisp
with a little chill, fresh with salt, exhilarating with light. The only
sanctuary was the sharply shelving beach, with the sand dunes behind
it, the sea in front of it, its roof the wide dome of the sky. The only
altar was formed by the barefoot bride and bridegroom standing

84 THE CASES

where the waters spread a constantly renewed carpet of foam and
spindrift around their feet. The only music was the sounding sea and
breeze. The only mystery was this beginning undertaken by two
human beings in view of an unseen future.

Father Jonathan arrived last. Punctually at eight he began the
ceremony. Barefoot like the bride and the bridegroom, wearing a
white sleeveless shirt over his denims and a gold-colored stole around
his neck, he stood at the edge of the tide, the sea to his right and the
land to his left. In front of him stood Hilda and Jerome, the boy and
the girl to be married, both in their early twenties. She, in a white
ankle-length dress gathered at her waist by a belt woven of long
grasses, her hair parted in the middle, falling down on her shoulders.
He, wearing a white shirt over blue shorts. Their faces were quiet and
calm, swept clean of any trouble.

Hilda and Jerome had their eyes fixed on Jonathan's as he began to
speak in a loud and exulting voice which, bell-like, carried to the ears
of the 40 or so people standing some yards away at the edge of the
sand dunes. "Here on the sand by the sea, here where all great human
things have always begun, we stand to witness another great
beginning. Hilda and Jerome are about to promise each other to each
other in the greatest of all human beginnings.''

A pleasant sense of anticipation ran through the listeners. Athletic,
bronzed, graceful, deliberate in his movements, taller than either the
boy or the girl in front of him, golden hair touching his shoulders,
Jonathan was in complete, even dramatic command of the situation.
His eyes had the peculiar blue sheen you cannot believe to be natural
until you see it. A fire of blue seemed to burn in them, giving off a
hypnotic brilliance. They lacked the warm sentiment of brown eyes;
but a burnished patina prevented you from reading them, and this
created their mystery.

Only one thing marred Jonathan's appearance. As he gestured
grandly and raised his hand in an initial blessing, some of the guests
noticed it: his right index finger was crooked. He could not straighten
it. But it was a little thing swallowed up in the golden-blue morning, in
the blaze of Jonathan's eyes, in the lilt of the moving sea.

As Jonathan's voice rang out, and nature kept up its endless rhythm
in apparent unison, only one person seemed incongruous. He stood at
the back and to one side of the guests, staring intently through
Polaroid glasses at the boy and girl. Lanky, clad in sweater and slacks,

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 85

with both hands thrust in his trousers pockets, he was the only one
wearing a hat, a black hat.

"Funny character. Wonder who he is?" Jerome's father whispered
to his wife. But the parents forgot about him momentarily, and no one
else particularly noticed him as Father Jonathan's sermon reached its
climax before the actual vows.

". . . both are entering this mystery. And both are mirrors of
nature's fullness — its womb, its fertility, its nurturing milk, its
powerful seed, its supreme ecstasy, its nestling sleep, its mystery of
oneness, and the long mysteries of the immortality it alone confers — if
we are one with nature and participants in its sacrament of life and of
death. As the perfect man, Jesus, our model, was."

The man in the black hat stirred uneasily, leaning forward to catch
every detail, all the while his eyes on the boy and the girl.

Father Jonathan flung a smoldering gaze over the guests to his left.
"Many have sought to rob him, our supreme example, of his human
value for us." His voice throbbed with deep emotion. "To cap his
glorious life with a weak, milk-and-water ending. What is all this
dreadful chicanery of his supposed resurrection but a cheat? If he
died, he died. Completely. Really. What sort of sacrifice and therefore
what sort of love for us was there if he died to live again? Thus to rob
the sacrifice of its very sting and its true glory and to rob him and us of
all true human nobility — is not this the cruel joke of the happy ending
they have attached to his heroic death? He, the supreme hero? Making
a Grimm's fairy tale out of the greatest story ever told.

"You, Jerome and Hilda," again looking at them with pride, "you
will love his mystery of human unity; and, in time, like him, you will
face death as he did, human, noble, and go back to nature, to be
cemented into its eternal oneness where Jesus went with bowed head
but triumphant."

By now the man in the black hat had moved in front of the little
crowd of guests.

Jonathan launched into the marriage ceremony proper. "Look now,
Hilda and Jerome, all nature is going to pause for one brief instant to
witness your vows." A sweeping gesture took in all the scene, the
crooked index finger jabbing oddly askew. "All things, the wind, the
sun, the sea, the earth, all will stop in their ways ..."

Jonathan broke off. He seemed to be having difficulty in drawing his
breath. He gulped. His face flushed with the effort to continue. Then
he managed to take up again, dictating word for word to Hilda.

86 THE CASES

"With all my heart, 1 do take you ..."

"With all my heart, I do take you," Hilda echoed in clear, confident
tones.

"As my honored husband ..."

"As my honored husband . . ."

"Within the mystery of nature ..."

"Within the mystery of nature . . ."

"To have and to hold ..."

"To have and to hold ..."

"In life and in death ..."

"In life and in death . . ."

"As God's womb and pleasure ..."

"As God's womb and pleasure . . ."

"For the glory of our humanness . . ."

"For the glory of our humanness . . ."

"As Jesus before us . . ."

"As Jesus before us . . ."

"World of living and dead ..."

"World of living and dead . . ."

"Amen."

"Amen."

Hilda slipped the ring onto Jerome's finger. The guests stirred. Some
had become unaccountably tense and could not take their eyes off
Jonathan. Afterward, some remarked that it was as if a disfigurement
had begun to show through in him.

The man in the black hat, now in front of the dunes and apart from
the crowd, still watched intently.

Jerome looked at Jonathan and waited for the words of his vow to
Hilda. Hilda's eyes were on Jerome. All nature, indeed, had seemingly
stopped for her. For the first time she felt at one with life, with the
world, with her own body.

Jonathan was again struggling with some impediment. His body was
stiff. His chest swelled. At last he was able to fill his lungs, and he
started to dictate Jerome's words.

"With this ring ..."

"With this ring . . ." Jerome took up the words.

"I do take you ..."

"I do take you . . ."

"As my dearly beloved wife ..."

"As my dearly beloved wife . . ."

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 87

"As you have given me . . ."

"As you have given me ..."

"The wonder and the mystery . . ."

"The wonder and the mystery . . ."

Jerome waited for the next line. But Jonathan was suddenly again
almost purple with effort. His blue eyes were bulging now, showing
large, terror-ridden whites. His hands, which had been folded across
his chest solemnly, now were tensed by his sides, opening and shutting
convulsively. He opened his mouth and rasped: "Of being one with
nature . . ."

"Of being one with nature ..." Jerome repeated.

"And — and — and . . ." Jonathan stammered.

Hilda's head turned in alarm. Jonathan's voice was climbing on each
syllable toward hysteria. It seemed that every other sound had died
out, as everyone hung on Jonathan's words.

"And — of be-being one with Je-Jes-Jeeeesus" — Jonathan's voice
broke into a screeching crescendo that split the air. "JESUS!" The
name was a curse cracking on every ear. His face twisted into an
ugliness that froze Hilda with horror.

In a flash Jonathan was on top of Hilda, his outstretched arms
catching her under the arms. Now, in his onrush, he was carrying her
out bodily into the water, groaning and muttering wildly to himself.
He pushed her head down, keeping her face beneath the surface and
straddling her body as she kicked and struggled.

The lightning speed of Jonathan's actions and their crazy incongru-
ity had frozen everybody. For a split second they did not grasp what
was happening. Then a woman screamed with the unmistakable,
high-pitched warning of mortal danger.

Within seconds half a dozen men ran and tore Jonathan's hands
away from Hilda, struck him across the neck, lifted him off her, and
threw him full length on the beach. He lay there thrashing and kicking
for a moment, then went still.

Jerome and Hilda's father lifted Hilda clear of the water; she was
gasping for air and sobbing, her long dress trailing rivulets of sand and
water. They laid her down on the high ground among the sand dunes,
her head pillowed on her mother's lap. Gradually she recovered her
breath, crying uncontrollably. Jerome knelt by her, dazed, his mouth
open, his face utterly white, incapable of any word.

Down on the beach, Jonathan lay fiat on the sand. He stirred and
groaned, turning over on his side. Then, lifting himself up on one

88 THE CASES

elbow, he clambered slowly and fitfully to his feet and swayed
unsteadily. His back and side were caked with sand. The water still
dripped from his long hair and his clothes. His eyes were bloodshot.
His head was lowered. He blinked in the sunlight at the hard stares of
the guests ranged around him. He was at bay.

Nobody said anything at first. Then a sharp, metallic voice broke in,
"If you will allow me, sir," addressing Hilda's father, "I am in charge
here now, sir." The authority and confidence in that voice attracted all
eyes to the speaker. It was the strange man, his black hat off now,
revealing a lean, not quite youthful face full of lines, beneath a full
head of gray hair tousled by the wind. He removed his sunglasses and
with a limp came closer to Jonathan, looking steadily at him. Then he
said quietly: "You and I have an important appointment now, Father
Jonathan." He paused; then, with a fresh edge to his voice, "The
sooner the better." The black hat was on his head again. He stretched
out his hand to Jonathan.

No one spoke. No one objected. Perhaps all were relieved that
someone was taking over.

The man spoke again. "The sun will be high in a couple of hours.
We have work to do that will not wait. Come!"

Jonathan blinked for a moment. Then shakily he put the hand with
the crooked finger into the other man's open palm. They turned their
backs on the sea. Hand in hand, Jonathan stumbling and swaying, the
other man limping, they walked up over the dunes and across to the
dirt road where the cars were parked, and stopped by a station wagon.

They stood there for a moment. The guests could see the man
talking to Jonathan. Jonathan, half-bent and leaning on the door
handle of the station wagon, was listening, his head bowed. He nodded
violently. Then they both got in.

As the car moved off and the sound died away, someone spoke for
the first time. "Who was that?"

Hilda's father, his eyes filled with tears, watched the station wagon
as it disappeared down the road. "Father David," he muttered.
"Father David M. Everything is going to be all right now." He shook
his head, as if freeing his mind from an uncomfortable thought. "He
was right all along."

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 89

FATHER DAVID

At the time he led Jonathan stumbling away from the aborted seashore
marriage in 1970, Father David M. (''Bones," as his students liked to
call him) was a forty-eight-year-old priest, member of an East Coast
diocese, professor of anthropology at a major seminary, and official
exorcist for his diocese. He had already conducted four exorcisms
himself and he had been assistant at five others. The first had been in
Paris, where he had been assistant to an older priest; the others had
been in his home diocese.

When David M. started his professional life as an anthropologist in
1956, he could not have dreamed that within ten years his knowledge
of anthropology and his enthusiasm for prehistory would be the major
reasons for his role as exorcist and later for his involvement in the
bizarre case of Father Jonathan. Nor could he have dreamed even in
that March of 1970, as the exorcism began, that it would lead him,
first, to the most harrowing personal crisis of his life, and then to
abandon anthropology as a study and a profession.

When David was born in Coos, New Hampshire's northernmost
county, in 1922, the state, with a population of nearly half a million,
was still a rustic farming community, very far removed from the
sophisticated centers south in Boston and New York. Coos County in
particular was still permeated with the Yankee traditions of hard work,
thrift, sobriety; and it hearkened to the preaching of the evils of
alcohol, the wisdom of paying cash for what you bought, of
self-reliance, individual responsibility, and — as rock-bottom founda-
tion of right living — the infallible, all-sufficient guidance and enlight-
enment of the Bible. Even today, when the central and southern tiers
of the state have suffered from the malice of change, the land itself still
carries for the mind the atmosphere of an ancient and undisturbed
kingdom. In mountain, lake, cliff, and forest there is a repose as
awesome as the naked weight of the Himalayas and the volcanic face
of the Sinai Mountains.

David M. was the only child born of affluent Yankee Roman
Catholic parents on both sides. He spent his early years on his father's
farm, occasionally visiting the nearby town and, once in a while,
traveling down to Portsmouth with his parents for a brief vacation.

The most abiding images David has of the world in his youth are of

gO THE CASES

lakes, mountains, forests, cliffs, rock formations, valleys shaded by
trees and crags, and the great, still stretches of land that surrounded
his home. His ears still retain the harmonies riding in the place names
of his home ground — Ammonoosuc River, Saco River, Franconia
range, Merrimack Valley, and the lingering magic of Lake Winni-
pesaukee, whose 20 miles of length were clad in foliage, and the names
of whose 274 islands he once learned to repeat by heart.

The Roman Catholicism of his parents was of a conservative kind
and an intimate part of daily life. Both parents had been to college; his
father had studied in Cambridge, England. Both had traveled in
Europe. And their home was centered around the library and its large
open fireplace, where they gathered after meals and where David
spent long hours browsing through his parents' books.

Many of David's relatives lived in the surrounding countryside. His
playmates were normally his cousins. His earliest memories of any
intellectual awakening he traces to the influence of an uncle who,
having taught history in Boston for 37 years, finally retired to live on
the farm with his brother and sister-in-law, David's parents.

Old Edward, as they called him, personified for David the stability
and permanence of his home; and he deeply influenced David's mental
development. Edward spent most of his days reading. He stirred out of
the house ritually twice a day; once, in the morning, to walk around
the farm — rain, hail, or snow; a second time, after dinner, when he
walked up and down in the shade of a little copse at the west end of
the house, smoking his pipe and talking to himself.

David remembers going with Old Edward again and again to view
the Creat Stone Face, ''The Old Man of the Mountain,'' high up on its
perch above Franconia Notch. "No one knows how it came there,
son," Edward used to remark. "It just happened. Man emerging from
raw nature." It became a symbol in David's mind, and a preview of
how he later came to think of man's origin.

Whenever David and his Uncle Edward visited the Great Stone
Face, the ritual was always the same. Once in view of the "Old Man,"
they would sit down and eat lunch over a fire. Afterward, Edward
would light his pipe and, staring at the pockmarked profile, start
dawdling through the same conversational piece.

"Now, lad! Who do you think made it?"

"It just seems to come out of the earth and rock, sir," would be
David's reply.

Sometimes Edward would bring a work of his favorite author,

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH Ql

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Having read an episode to David, he would
discuss it with his nephew. The Scarlet Letter was his most frequent
text.

"Why did Arthur die on the scaffold, lad, and with a smile on his
lips?" he would ask.

After a while, David knew the expected answer: "Because, sir, he
knew he had to pay for his sins."

And then: "Why did he sin, lad?"

"Because of Adam's Original Sin, sir," would be David's answer.

Once David ventured a question himself. "Why did Hester put the
scarlet letter back again in her dress pocket, if it was a bad letter, sir?"
The answer came with unerring relish: "She wanted to be romantic,
lad. Romantic. That's what they called it." It was David's first
introduction to romanticism, an issue that took very tangible and
painful form for him later on. The evil spirit he exorcised in Jonathan
had possessed Jonathan under the guise of pure romanticism.

When David was fourteen, he was sent to a prep school in New
England but his vacations were all spent on the family farm in Coos
County. His uncle still lived there; and together they went on several
trips to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Montreal.

It was, however, a trip to Salem, Massachusetts — made at his own
request — that became of prime importance in David's mind. He was
sixteen then. His uncle wanted to see the John Turner house, which
had been immortalized by Hawthorne in The House of the Seven
Gables. But David had been delving into a copy of Cotton Mather's
Ecclesiastical History of New England that he had found in his father's
library; and he was more interested in people such as Elizabeth
Knapp, Anne Hibbins, Ann Cole, and other "witches" and "warlocks"
of seventeenth-century Salem. So when they had visited the Peabody
Museum and the Turner house, they spent an hour and a half in the
"witch house" where Judge Corwin had examined the 19 men and
women condemned and executed for witchcraft in 1692.

David realized later that his stay in and around the "witch house"
had a special significance. As they moved around inside and outside
the house, his uncle provided him with a running commentary on the
1692 trials.

All the while, David had a striking but not uncomfortable sensation
or instinct that "invisible eyes," as he put it then to his uncle, or
"spirits," as he puts it now, were present to him and communicating in
an odd way. They seemed to be asking something. It was as if one part

92 THE CASES

of his mind listened and recorded his uncle's commentary and the
sights around him, while another part was preoccupied with other,
intangible "words" and "sights.''

Striking as the experience was at the time, it did not in any way
obsess his thoughts in ensuing years. In fact, he never vividly recalled
this Salem experience until 32 years later at Old Edward's death and
again during the exorcism of Father Jonathan.

No one in David's circle of family and friends was surprised when
he decided to enter the seminary in 1940. His father would have
preferred an Army career for him; his mother had nourished a secret
hope of grandchildren. But David had made up his mind.

After seven years, when he was ordained in 1947 at the age of
twenty-five, the bishop asked whether he would be willing to go
through some extra years of study. The diocese needed a professor of
anthropology and ancient history. If he agreed, he would first earn a
doctorate in theology: Roman authorities were chary of letting any
young cleric loose in scientific fields without a special grounding in
doctrine. It might not be easy or pleasant, because Rome did not think
highly of American theologates. The whole program would take about
seven more years of David's life.

In spite of the possible difficulties, David consented. The following
autumn he started to follow theological courses in Rome; and then, in
the autumn of 1950, he proceeded to the Sorbonne in Paris.

Like many others of that time, he had heard much about a French
Jesuit named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but he had never been
exposed to his thought. In Paris he fell under the direct influence of
the ideas which Teilhard had generated. For postwar Catholic
intellectuals, Teilhard was something of a phenomenon; and from the
mid-1950s and on he enjoyed the reputation of a twentieth-century
Aquinas, and evoked the type of personal devotion that only a
Bonaventure and a Ramon Llul had attracted in earlier centuries.

French of the French, intellectual, ascetic, World War I hero,
brilliant student, innovative teacher, mystic, discoverer of Pekin Man
(Sinanthropos), pioneer excavator in Sinkiang, the Gobi Desert,
Burma, Java, Kashmir, South Africa, Teilhard set out to make it
intellectually possible for a Christian to accept the theories of
Darwinian evolution and still retain his religious faith.

All matter, said Teilhard, is and always has been transfused with

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 93

"consciousness," however primitive. Through billions of years and
through all the forms of chemical substance, plant, animal, and finally
human life, this "consciousness" had blossomed. It is still blossoming;
and now, in this final stage of its development, it is about to burst forth
in a final culmination: the Omega Point, when all humans and all
matter will be elevated to a unity only dreamed by the visionaries and
saints of the past. The key character of the Omega Point will be Jesus,
asserted Teilhard. And so all will be gathered into all, and all will be
one in the love and permanent being of achieved salvation.

By 1950, when David arrived in Paris, Teilhard and his doctrines
had become too much for the Roman authorities with their long
memories. Teilhard's critical eyes, his ready flow of language, his
Gallic logic, his constant ability to answer inquisitorial questions with
a flood of professional and technical details, his refusal to kowtow
intellectually, and his very daring attempt to synthesize modern
science with the ancient faith — all this frightened ecclesiastical minds.
It was not only Teilhard's aquiline nose that reminded the authorities
of his eighteenth-century ancestor, Descartes, whose ideas they still
considered anathema. It was as well, and chiefly, Teilhard's attempt to
rationalize the mysteries of Catholic belief, to "scientize" the Divine
and make the truths of revelation totally explicable in terms of test
tubes and fossil remains.

Teilhard: dedicated to the "clear and distinct ideas" of Descartes,
the father of all modern scientific reasoning; fired inwardly by the
personal ideals of Ignatius, father not only of all Jesuits but of all the
lone and the brave; lured onward by the mystical darkness of wisdom
celebrated by his favorite author, John of the Cross, whose pains he
shared but whose ecstasy ever escaped him; honed and refined in
intellect by the best scientific training of his day; Teilhard was the
custom-built answer, the ready-made darling for the bankrupt Catho-
lic intellectuals of his century and for thousands of Protestants caught
in the heel of the hunt by the vicious clamps of that merciless reason
they had championed as man's glory some four centuries previously.
Teilhard was, at one and the same time, their trailblazer and their
martyred hero. For the tired and besieged French and Belgians he
produced shining shibboleths to cry and a new pride to wear. He
fanned into a blaze the cold fire that slowly burned in the brains of
innovation-hungry Dutch and Germans. He nourished the ever-latent
emotionalism of Anglican divines, who by then were floating free of
traditional shackles.

94 THE CASES

His new terminology (he was the author of many current neolo-
gisms), his daring thought, his scientific panoply, his international
reputation, his refusal to revolt when silenced by chicanery, his long
vigil, his obscure death, and finally the flashing wonder of his
posthumous fame and publication, all this conferred on him, on his
name, and on his ideas the efficacy once enjoyed by a Joan of Arc, a
Francis Xavier, and a Sinione Weil. When Rome would never
canonize him, he was canonized by a new 'Voice of the people." He
was a marvelous source of esoteric words and intricate thoughts for
American pop theologians.

Very few realized that Teilhard's vision had ceased long before his
death. He had provided Christians with only a respite between the
long autumn of the nineteenth century and the winter that enshrouded
everything in the late twentieth century. Teilhard was neither strong
food to satisfy real hunger nor heavenly manna for a new Pentecost.
He was merely a stirrup cup of heady wine.

Under Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church of the post- World War
II period was being constantly purged of "dangerous ideas." And
Teilhard fell foul of the censors. He was silenced and exiled, forbidden
to publish or lecture. Nevertheless, his ideas ran through the
intellectual milieu of Europe and America like mercury. David with
many others drank deeply of this wine of ideas and believed that they
were on their way to a new dawn.

Of course, David knew from the start that he was destined for
anthropology later on. Therefore, in Rome he concentrated on those
theological questions which had a direct bearing on anthropology. He
studied, in particular, the divine creation of the material world and of
man, the Adam and Eve doctrine and that of Original Sin. He found
that Church teaching was explicit: God had created the world, if not
exactly in seven days, at least directly and out of nothing. There had
been a first man, Adam, and a first woman, Eve. Both had sinned.
Because of their sin, all other men and women — for all men and
women who ever existed were descended from Adam and Eve — were
deprived of a divine quality called grace. They were born with
Original Sin. And this condition was only changed by the sacrament of
Baptism.

David was troubled that doctrines stated in this way, even including
all the refinements and modifications allowed, were extremely difficult

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 95

to explain in the light of the theories of paleontology current in his
time. And the greater the impact of science on the mind, the more
dramatic the difficulty.

When the full weight of anthropological and cross-cultural studies
was brought to bear on the question of human origins, a human being
seemed to have a long and remote ancestry during which not merely
his body was formed but what was called his mind and higher instincts
were fashioned. And, of course, if you once admitted these beliefs and
assumptions of "scientific" theory to be "facts," or even highly
probable, the idea of God creating the human condition and sending
his son, Jesus, to save it from its dire predicament, this central theme
of all Christianity was up for auction to the highest bidder.

The genius of Teilhard was that his bid was as high as that of any
non-Catholic or non-Christian in the field, to construct a bridge across
such an impassable and impossible gap. And it was in view of this
promise that David, along with a whole generation of men and
women, adopted Teilhard's formulation.

But the fatal flaw was quick and sure. The creating god of Christians
was no longer taken as divine. He became internal to the world in a
mysterious and essential way. Jesus, as savior, was no longer the
conquering hero irrupting into the human universe and standing
history on its head. He was reduced to the peak of that universe's
evolution, as natural an element in the universe as amino acids. The
thrust that would finally bring forth Jesus in the sight of all men was an
evolutionary accident — a kind of cosmic joke — that started over five
billion years ago in helium, hydrogen gases, and amino acids of protean
space. That thrust had no choice but to keep on thrusting until it gave
birth to the refined and culminating flower of "full human conscious-
ness" in the "latter days."

Like the Great Stone Face on Franconia Notch that David
remembered so vividly from his visits with his uncle, Jesus now simply
emerged from nature. The Omega Point. Only this would be the final
hour of glory, the Last Day.

Neither David nor many others who spoke of the "greatest
biological adventure of all time" — meaning human history — were
alerted to the fact that, once the ancient beliefs of Christianity were
interpreted in this fashion, it was a matter of time before other
fundamental issues were affected, and very hard-nosed conclusions
would have to be drawn. But present euphoria often beclouds later

q6 the cases

issues. Intellectual freedom has its own chains, its own brand of
myopia. And a triumph of mere logic seems always to carry with it a
neglect both of the human and of the essence of spirit.

In this ferment, David's mentality matured.

From those years spent in doctoral studies, David has two deeply
personal memories. Both took place on the occasion of his Uncle
Edward's death. It was during David's second last year at the
Sorbonne that the old man, in his eighties by then, started to die.
David had just arrived back in Paris from a field trip in southern
France when he received a telegram from his father: Old Edward had
not much time; he had asked for David repeatedly.

David caught a flight that evening. By the following evening he was
back in Coos County on the family farm. Edward was sinking
gradually, coming out of semicomatose states and lapsing back again.

Toward midnight of David's second day at home, he was sitting in
Edward's room reading. His family had retired for the night. The
room's only light came from the reading lamp on the desk where
David sat. Outside all was quiet. A late wind sighed softly in the trees.
Occasionally a very distant cry would echo from the surrounding
countryside.

At a certain moment David raised his head and looked at Edward.
He thought he had heard the sound of a voice. But the old man was
lying still, breathing with difficulty. David went over, dipped a hand
towel in a bowl of water, and mopped the perspiration from Edward's
forehead. He was about to return to his chair when he again heard, or
thought he heard, a voice — or voices — he was not sure. He looked at
Edward: he was unchanged. Then he lifted his head and listened.

If he had not known better, he would have sworn that about half a
dozen people were talking with low voices in the next room. But he
knew that, except for his parents and one house woman, he was alone
with Edward in the house.

Edward stirred uneasily and drew in a few quick breaths. His
eyelids fluttered for a moment. He opened them slowly. His gaze
traveled across the ceiling to the far corner of the room, then back
again to David. "Can I help you, sir?" David asked. He had never
addressed Edward in any other way. Edward gave a characteristic
shake of his head which David knew so well from the past.

Almost immediately Edward went into a short death agony, inhaling
long, deep breaths, exhaling laboriously, heaving his chest, and

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 97

groaning. David pressed the bell to call his parents, knelt down bv the
head of the bed, and started to pray in a whisper.

But a motion of the old man's finger stopped him. Edward was
trying to say something. David bent his ear down close to the dying
man's month. He could barely hear the breathed syllables:
". . . prayed for them ... I prayed for them . . . coming to take me
home . . . you did not . . . lad . . . home . . . you did not . . .
home . . ."

Those voices, David thought. Those voices. Men and women. When
had he been with Edward and others when Edward had prayed for
those others and he had not? Why would they need prayers? He could
not get it out of his head that Edward had been talking about their
visit to Salem. He did not see any connection. But he could not rid
himself of the idea.

Edward expelled one long breath. His lips moved and twisted
slightly. David heard a faint rattle in his throat. Then he found himself
alone in that long, deadening, unbroken quiet when the dying is done.
Edward's eyes opened to the glassy sightlessness of a dead man's look.

After they buried Old Edward, David stayed for a couple of days;
then he went down to New York. He had one or two errands to do in
the city, and he had a chance to meet Teilhard de Chardin. He
brought with him a copy of Teilhard 's he Milieu Divin in the hope of
an autograph.

The meeting with the French Jesuit was brief and poignant for
David. The mutual friend who arranged the meeting warned David as
they drove to meet Teilhard that the old man had not been well lately.
"Let's make the visit brief. Okay?"

Teilhard was much thinner than David had expected. He greeted
David affably but crisply in French, chatted for a few minutes about
David's career as an anthropologist, then took the copy of his book
from David's hands and looked at it pensively. As if making up his
mind on the spur of the moment, he took a pen from his pocket and
wrote some words on the flyleaf, closed the book, handed it back, and
glanced at David. Teilhard's lips were pursed characteristically, his
head slightly bent to one side and forward.

David noticed the strength of Teilhard's chin. But, much more, it
was the expression in Teilhard's eyes that imprinted itself on David's
memory. David had expected to see the long, deep look of a man who
had traveled very far and thought very steeply of the deepest issues in

98 THE CASES

life. Instead, looking at him across the humped curve of that aquiline
nose, Teilhard's eyes were very wide open. They had no hint in them
of memories or reflections, no remnants of Teilhard's own storms.
There were no traces of any glinting intelligence. The old paleontol-
ogist was completely with David, totally present to him, taking in
David's own glance with a personable expression and a direct
simplicity that almost embarrassed the younger man.

After a few seconds, the older man said: "You will be true. You will
be true, Father. Search for the spirit. But, even if all else goes, give
hope. Hope."

Their looks held together for a moment more. Then they parted.
Returning to the center of the city, David remarked to the friend who
was driving: "Why in the end, or how in the end, did it become so
simple for him?" His friend had no answer for him.

Suddenly, David remembered: what had Teilhard written on the
flyleaf of his book? He opened it. Teilhard's dedication ran: "They said
I opened Pandora's Box with this book. But, they did not notice, Hope
was still hiding in one of its corners."

David was bothered for weeks after that meeting by a nagging idea
that hope had become difficult for the seventy- three-year-old Jesuit.
But after his return to Paris for the remainder of his courses at the
Sorbonne, the sharpness of the incident faded temporarily to the back
of his memory.

By the time David returned to the United States in June 1955,
Teilhard had been dead for over two months.

When he did return to the United States, few of David's former
associates and acquaintances could recognize the new intellectual man
he had become. He was thirty-four by then, in robust physical
condition. His six-foot frame w T as lean and well muscled. His friends
did notice the premature grayness, the faint but definite lines of
maturity around his mouth, the disappearance from his face of that
youthful ebullience with which he had been clothed five years before
when he set out for Europe.

Another look had replaced the ebullience: it was a certain
"definitiveness," as one friend described it. David's eyes were fuller in
meaning. He spoke just as pleasantly as before, but less casually and
with an emphasis that conveyed more meaning than ever before.
When he talked of deep matters, those around him felt that what he
thought and said came from an inner wealth of experience and
resources gathered carefully, marshaled in harmony, and kept bright

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 99

and burnished for use. He had the "finished" look. And more than one
elder colleague remarked, "One day, he'll be the bishop."

Before starting his lectures at the seminary, David spent one extra
year in private study, visiting museums, and traveling to various parts
of the world where paleontologists were working in the field. This
extra year was invaluable to him; he had time to reflect on the
condition of research, to catch up on his reading, to acquaint himself
with professional colleagues in the field, and to examine the various
diggings firsthand. Then, in mid-September 1956, he arrived home to
Coos County for two weeks' vacation on the farm with his parents.
The following October he started giving his first courses at the
seminary.

The next nine years of his life passed uneventfully. From the
beginning he was popular and highly thought of. The students
conferred on him the nickname of "Bones" because of the fossils he
kept in glass cases in his study.

In May 1965, he was again staying in Paris, attending an interna-
tional convention. During the three weeks he was there, he was asked
one evening by an old friend, a parish priest from a northern French
diocese, to help out as a substitute assistant at the exorcism of a
fifty-year-old man.

David had very little knowledge of Exorcism. Indeed, from his
anthropological studies he was inclined to regard Exorcism as a
remnant of past superstition and ignorance. Like any well-indoctri-
nated anthropologist, he could parallel the Roman Catholic Exorcism
rite with scores of similar rites from Africa to Oceania and throughout
Asia.

"No, Father David," the parish priest had answered him amicably
when David had let the old man know that in his opinion Exorcism
and satanic possession belonged to the world of invented myth and
fable. "No, Father. This is not the way it is. Myths are never made.
They are born out of countless generations. They embody an instinct, a
deep community feeling. Fables are made as containers, fashioned by
men deliberately to preserve the lessons they have learned. But
this — satanic possession, Exorcism — well! come and see for yourself.
At any rate, help me out."

In this exorcism David was substituting for a young priest who had
fallen ill in the course of the rite. The exorcism had already lasted
about 30 hours. "Just another couple of hours, and it is the end," the
old parish priest had told him before beginning.

lOO THE CASES

In fact, by the time David entered the case, the worst was over.
After only two and a half hours more, the parish priest was about to
complete the exorcism and expel the evil spirit. He asked David to
hand him the holy-water flask and the crucifix.

At that point, and without warning, the possessed man became
rigid. He screamed and jeered: "If you take it from him, Priest, we
needn't leave. He has too many enemies. We needn't leave! He didn't
help them when they asked him. We won't leave! We needn't leave!"
Then a hideous, raucous laughter cackled at them all. The possessed
man pointed a fine finger at David. "Hah-hah! Burnt. And he didn't
pray for them . . . Father of hopelessness! Hah-ha!"

David's nerves were jangled. The parish priest took the crucifix and
the holy-water flask himself and concluded the exorcism successfully.
Afterward, he had a short chat with David. He calmed the young man,
but added: "You have a problem. I don't know your life. I am sure
God will solve it at home for you."

Back in his own diocese, David had a heart-to-heart talk with his
bishop, who remarked on the change in David: no longer the
self-confident, sometimes cocksure, always rather inaccessible intellec-
tual he had known, David was now questioning and searching for
internal peace, working through some puzzle he could not verbalize
but which he felt entangling him.

David talked on, telling the bishop about the Paris exorcism and
about his meeting with Teilhard years before.

"Well, have you some serious doubts about your orthodoxy as an
anthropologist?" asked the bishop after a time. "Or rather, perhaps, I
should phrase the question differently. Do you feel that the exorcism
experience has opened something in you, some deficiency perhaps,
which your anthropology and your intellectualism were only harden-
ing and making permanent?"

"I honestly don't know," David answered. "There is the death of
Old Edward. Why did I take his last words so seriously? I know they
meant something personal to me. But I don't know exactly what."

"Look, David," the bishop finally said, "I will put you in touch with
Father G., the diocesan exorcist. He has very little work, thank God.
But he can help you one way or another — at least as far as the puzzle
of that exorcism goes."

Father G. turned out to be a breezy character full of snappy little
phrases and quick, jerky movements. "Okay, Father David, okay," was
his comment on David's story. "You have a problem. I have no

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 101

solution for problems except action. I'm not an intellectual. I failed
every exam they gave me. But they needed priests in the diocese so
they let me through. I can say a valid Mass and baptize babies at any
rate, even if my Latin is awful. And I am a good exorcist. The next
time we have a case of possession, 111 put you in the picture. Only
concrete participation in this matter will help you."

True to his word, Father G. took David as his assistant exorcist in
two cases of possession the following year. Both were relatively
uneventful; at any rate, nothing personal to David occurred in either
of them. David, however, underwent a continuing change within
himself in the succeeding two years. His experience with the possessed
man in Paris and with the two exorcisms at home had convinced him
that, whatever was at stake in possession and exorcism, it was not a
question either of myth or fable, or of mental illness. In addition, he
had to keep struggling to make sense of his personal history, He kept
stringing a few facts together, trying to make sense out of them.

There was, first of all, the dying conversation of his Uncle Edward
about praying for "them" and their going "home," and David's own
failure to pray for "them." Then there was Teilhard's "give hope" and
his words on the flyleaf of the book. And, finally, there were the
jeering words of the fifty-year-old man in Paris. On the face of it, he
could not understand any of these things, and there seemed to be very
little connection between them all. Yet David felt sure there was a
connection, if he could only perceive it.

During a few vacations at home on the farm, he walked down to the
cemetery where Edward was buried. He sat in the old man's bedroom.
He hiked over to stand in the same place Edward and he had so often
visited, and stood in full view of the "Old Man" of Franconia Notch.
Once or twice after dinner, he strolled up and down the copse at the
west end of the house and thought about Edward. He always felt calm
and peaceful in that copse but could not understand why.

David's mother, who was always very close to her son and his
moods, said briefly to him as he was departing for the seminary after
one of those home visits: "David, some things take time. Time. Only
time can help. Be patient. With yourself, I mean. And with whatever it
is that is bothering you. Remember how many years it took Edward to
arrive at his own peace."

David was grateful for these words and felt consoled. It was some
sort of special message for him. But, again, there was the perplexing
character of it: the consolation and the "message" character of her

102 THE CASES

words yielded to no rational explanation. Just as the effect of the copse
on him, or the significance of Edward's last words, or what precisely
the possessed man in Paris had conveyed to him, or the strangeness he
had discovered in Teilhard. The point was none of his knowledge and
scholarship seemed to be of avail. The meanings of all these incidents
seemed to flow from some source other than his intellect; they were
foreign to his knowledge and his learning. And this disturbed him.

His students began to notice that the tone and, in part, the content
of David's lectures changed. He was still as unrelenting as ever in his
probings of traditional doctrines in the light of modern scientific
findings. And he excused in no way traditional presentations of
doctrines about creation and Original Sin.

But a new element caught their attention. "Bones" returned again
and again to the data of anthropology and paleontology with phrases
they had not heard him use before. "As long as we measure this solely
with our rulers and our logical reasoning, we will find no cause for
hope," he might say. Or: "In addition to the scientist's eye and the
theologian's subtleties, we must have an eye for spirit." Once he ended
a lecture on burial cults in Africa saying, in effect: "But even if you
analyze all these data theologically and rationally, you have to be
careful. You can do all that faithfully, and yet pass blindly by the one
trace of spirit present in the situation." There seemed to be a note of
regret in his tone at such moments.

Very few people — and this included his students, who generally got
to know their professors intimately — very few knew that by this time
David had been appointed diocesan exorcist. Father G. had been
severely injured in an automobile accident and would never walk
again.

David did not take his new post lightly. In his interview with the
bishop when he accepted the post, he tried to get across a curious
foreboding to his bishop. "I am changing," he said. "I mean I am
slowly coming to a deep, very deep realization about what I have
become over the years. It isn't that I have gruesome problems. Rather,
it's as if I had neglected something vital and the time is coming when I
will have to face it. Exorcisms have the effect of making this need
more acute," he told the bishop.

"You, Father David, can never stop being useful to the diocese,"
was the bishop's remark.

"No. Of course not. That is, I hope not. But—" David broke off and
looked past the bishop. He had the vaguest premonition. If only he

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH IO3

could lie it down in words. "It may be, Bishop, that at the end of a
couple of years . . ." He broke off again and stared out the window.
Vaguely he saw the faces of two choices rising up. Yet they made no
sense to him. He turned and looked at the bishop. "It may be that I
will resign from my teaching job at the seminary."

"Let's take a chance on that," the bishop answered pleasantly,
confidently.

JONATHAN

For three weeks in November 1967, David was on leave from the
seminary. He was in New York dealing with the strange case of one of
his own students, Father Jonathan, born Yves L. in Manchester, New
Hampshire. By the time of his excommunication from the Roman
Catholic Church, Yves had changed his name. He was fourteen years
younger than Father David. Like David, he came from an affluent
home and, for all practical purposes, was an only child.

Yves' father, Romain, was Catholic, French Canadian, originally
from Montreal, and a doctor by profession. His mother, Sybil, a
convert to Catholicism, was of Swedish parentage. Her first marriage,
a childless one, had ended when she was twenty-seven years old, in the
suicide of her husband.

Sybil was over forty and Romain was fifty-two years old when Yves
was born. He had one half-brother, Pierre, by his father's previous
marriage in Canada. Pierre's mother had died giving birth to him.
When Yves was born, Pierre was twenty-eight, married, with children
of his own, and living in New Jersey.

Before her first marriage, Sybil had taught in a private Swiss school.
She had been educated at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and
had a doctorate in philosophy. She emigrated to Canada with her
parents in the early 1930s. Yves' good looks obviously reflected his
Swedish ancestry and particularly his mother's Nordic beauty.

His childhood was a happy one. Relations and friends who knew all
three over many years always remembered how united they were as a
family, though some remember the house as too adult and mind-
oriented for a little boy. Under his mother's influence in particular, by
the age of nine Yves was reading voraciously; and seven years later, at
the year-end examinations, he astounded his school examiners by his
detailed knowledge of English and American literature.

104 THE CASES

Yves' mother had a smoldering personality; she always conveyed the
impression of deep and somber experiences within her. As with many
converts, she was more Catholic than the Catholics themselves.

His father's religion was of a more popular and instinctual kind. His
youth had been spent in northwest Canada. Later, David was to find
out that the earliest images retained by Yves' father were more or less
like David's own: of rugged nature, gargantuan proportions of sky and
mountain and water, unbeatable and often cruel forces in the snow,
the storm, the wind, and the inhospitable soil.

Yves' parents always remained devoted to one another, but sexual
expression of that love stopped when Sybil underwent a hysterectomy
after Yves' birth. Apparently a deep feeling of being wounded or
deficient in her femininity took hold of her.

Romain, on the other hand, entered a religious crisis of acute pain
during his wife's pregnancy. Partly because his wife's life was
endangered by the pregnancy, and partly due to a fleeting affair he
had during that time, he developed a constant fear that, because of the
sins of his earlier years and the affair during his wife's pregnancy, he
would lose his faith, die an unbeliever, and suffer the loss of eternal life
in Heaven.

Yves never noticed any sign of his father's agonizing scrupulousness;
and he did not realize until much later in life that the marital love of
his parents had cooled very early in his childhood. Both parents were
outwardly very loving in every way.

By the time Yves reached his teens, Sybil had become a kind,
intelligent, and healthy woman. While no longer attached to what she
called the mechanisms of sexuality, she was very aware of her love and
sensuality, very graceful in her life, creative, but beyond ambition.
Romain was a doctor known for his devotion and skill as well as for his
sense of community duty. Father and mother had an unwritten pact of
close companionship and intimate care for each other. It created a
personal world of utter trust and undisturbed peace.

All in all, the atmosphere in which Yves grew up and in which he
felt secure was an adult one permeated by values he felt more than he
understood. Home life was inspired by sentiments he perceived and
reproduced but which did not deeply express his own tastes and
inclinations. Life with Sybil and Romain gravitated around unseen
things that the immature Yves knew best by intuition but could not
identify. There was an integrity of person and a graceful style in their

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 105

living. There was strength of love and a solidity of judgment. But the
viewpoint was narrow, too narrow.

Within that family Yves' values and personal ties — his parents, his
school, his parish ambient, his friends — were held in place by solid
moorings. He went to parish schools until he was eighteen. In ret-
rospect, and as far as anyone can remember, there was no dif-
ference between him and the other boys of his acquaintance. He was
excellent at sports and a very good dancer; he dated local girls, and
moonlighted with another boy until they had put enough money
together to buy a secondhand car.

He had only a few serious scrapes with the school authorities. It was
never a matter of study — at that he was consistently beyond reproach.
But now and then Yves would turn on one of his teachers in full view
of the class in a fit of verbal abuse and uncontrollable rage.

He was always apologetic later, and his obviously sincere regret and
winning smile generally had their effect; the school authorities forgave
him easily. It probably did not hurt that his father was quite a
prominent citizen, and that his mother was an active member of the
parish, and that Yves won a state prize every year for his English essay,
thus bringing honor to the school. He had a way with words and a
touch of the poet that was beyond the ordinary. It helped him in his
studies and in his scrapes.

By sixteen, Yves was an amateur painter, was writing poems to
commemorate events at school and at home, was chosen to be his class
valedictorian, and genuinely loved literature. By the time he was
seventeen, he had decided to become a priest.

A final school essay written by Yves at the end of his last year reads
today like a terrible prediction. In a precocious study of Shelley, Yves
wrote: "But with all this beauty, no one can say what it would have
done to the poet and the man had he lived beyond the age of thirty.
Shelley pioneered a fresh idea of godliness. But it might — we will
never know — have been a trap sprung by Job's Satan or Dante's
Devil." Yves carried the essay around with him for many years,
because he felt that in writing it he had perceived something very
profound.

He owed his decision to become a priest largely to his parents'
influence. Priesthood had been his father's first ambition in life; and he
transmitted this frustrated wish to his son — not as a command or an
obligation, but as an ideal. Yves knew from the age of seven that, in his

106 THE CASES

father's eyes, the priesthood was the best, the highest, the most
honorable profession. This is what his father conveyed by look, word,
and attitude. His mother's influence was not so positive. It was more
that, by looking down on any other occupation as secondary, she
highlighted priesthood as the ideal and the goal.

The seminary Yves attended was the same one to which two years
later Father David M. was posted. Yves was one of many seminarians
and did not arouse any particular attention on David's part. His studies
were, as usual, excellent. He had a very fine voice for chanting. He cut
an impressive figure in ceremonial robes: over six feet in height,
blond-haired, blue-eyed, with hands that were both masculine and
beautiful. He was marked by a winsome grace and symmetry of
movement; and, above all, he possessed a pair of eyes that radiated a
striking luminosity and that had an almost hypnotic effect on people
around him.

For all these reasons, Yves was the ideal actor in the liturgist's
manual and the type for which every preacher's handbook was
written. His knowledge of English and his good writing style helped
him in the practice sermons he composed and delivered at the
seminary.

In view of these talents, his interest in art and poetry was forgiven.
In the atmosphere of any seminary during the 1950s, there was always
a general suspicion of anyone interested in painting and literature —
especially poetry. Roman Catholicism of that time regarded such
things as * "dangerous." The Church always had had difficulty in
governing poets and painters; they sometimes were unwelcome
prophets and discomforting commentators.

But Yves used his gifts well. He kept within the seminary mentality.
He was careful, always careful.

One incident during his seminary years did disturb the authorities
briefly. It was 1961. As always with Yves, he quickly overcame it. The
occasion was Yves' final theological examinations, oral ones, conducted
by three of his professors and presided over by a fourth, who would, if
necessary, step in to arbitrate a dispute or cast a deciding vote in the
assigning of grades. Generally, the moderator — as the fourth member
of the examining board was called — had no part in the examinations
and used the time to read a book or catch up with his correspondence.

This time the moderator was David. At one point in Yves' oral
examinations, a heated dispute developed between one of the
examiners, Father Herlihy, and Yves. Father Herlihy was questioning

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH IO7

Yves about the nature of the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation,
marriage, etc.), and he appeared to David to be angry. But it was Yves
who drew David's closest attention — the handsome face drawn and
haggard, mouth pulled tight in an obstinate grimace, perspiring
forehead, eyes empty of their usual winsomeness. The change, so
complete, so rapid, startled David and worried him. He could see none
of the accustomed light, but only bitter resentment in Yves' eyes.

Yves finally was able to mumble out some sort of answer to Father
Herlihy's questions, and ran quickly from the examination room as
soon as time was up.

In his concern, David went along after the examination to Father
Herlihy's study to discuss in greater detail exactly what had happened
between him and Yves.

Apparently Yves had insisted at one point that all the sacraments
were no more than expressions of man's natural unity with the world
around him. According to accepted doctrine, this is heretical. The
sacraments are believed to be the supreme means of union with God.
Yves' words had implied that, after his death, Jesus had gone back to
nature; and therefore the sacraments were our way of being one with
Jesus in the earth, the sky, the sea, and the wide universe.

With his customary attention to detail, David wanted to know
Father Herlihy's exact impression from Yves' words. "That was the
funny part," Father Herlihy answered — and David never forgot his
next words — "what he said was just foolish; but it was the peculiar
sense he communicated to me; I seemed to be listening to something
not quite human — I know it sounds foolish."

Afterward, David had deep qualms about the whole matter. In part,
he blamed himself: he felt that his own lectures on creation and on the
origin of man had something to do with Yves' reaction. Yves could
have wrongly interpreted the Teilhardian doctrines David taught.
With only a thin and fragile line between Teilhard's view and a total
denial of divinity in Jesus, Teilhardian concepts were delicious mental
playthings that could — David saw clearly for the first time — be used to
exalt man as an animal, to make his world into a gilded menagerie, to
reduce Jesus to the status of a Christian hero as grandly noble and as
pitifully mortal as Prometheus in the Greek myth, and to picture God
as no more than the very bowels of earth and sky and the spatial
distances of the universe with all its expanding galaxies.

The incident continued to disturb David. Yves had conveyed merely
by his looks during the exchange with Father Herlihy a sort of inner

108 THE CASES

savagery and hate that David felt was out of kilter with Yves' normal
demeanor. David had an instinctive suspicion of such sudden and
dramatic breaks in the normal patterns of behavior. Perhaps it was
merely a bad moment — and everyone has such moments. But if not,
then that winning exterior and compatible behavior Yves ordinarily
displayed must mask something else, some inner condition of spirit and
bent of mind that no amount of seminary training had touched.

However, there the matter rested. The end of the school year was
on them. Three weeks later Yves, with eleven others, was ordained to
the priesthood. David himself was scheduled to leave for a vacation at
home on the family farm, and then to proceed to Mexico City for an
international conference of anthropologists. The incident was quickly
forgotten for the time being.

When the summer was over, Yves was posted as assistant to an
outlying parish of Manchester. He was near his hometown and within
calling distance of his parents. For Yves' mother the new appointment
was providential. Early in the new year, Yves' father, Romain, died
suddenly from a heart attack. She would have been quite alone if Yves
had not been posted to Manchester.

Yves' memory of the time span between September i960 and
January 1967 is clear and full of details. His recollections of 1967 are
incomplete but still helpful in reconstructing what happened to him.
From April 1968, when David made a first attempt to exorcise the evil
spirit possessing Yves, until March 1970, when David concluded the
exorcism, Yves' memory has large gaps. But his recollections, the notes
and memories of David, together with the transcript of his exorcism
contribute mightily to create a whole picture, a photomontage of how
satanic possession started in one individual, gained ground, progressed
continuously, and finally became as total as we can imagine it ever to
be.

Possession by the spirit of evil proceeds along the structure of
day-to-day life. In Yves' case, it used the priestly structure of his life,
appearing first of all in the way he administered the Sacrament of
Marriage, then in the way he said Mass, and finally in all his priestly
activities.

In the Sacrament of Ordination, it is the whole man who is
"priested." He does not simply acquire an extra function. He is not
endowed with merely a new faculty or granted a rare permission.
Rather, it is a new dimension of his spirit which necessarily affects all

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 10g

he does bodily and mentally. Any deformation of that dimension by
the introduction of some antipathetic or utterly foreign element spells
disturbance and trouble. The dimension of priesthood cannot be
removed or replaced; it can be degraded, neglected, distorted.

Yves took up his duties in St. Declan's parish with apparent gusto.
The work was not overwhelming. He had plenty of time for his own
occupations. The parish bordered on the countryside; he had a view of
the southeast from one window of his study and of the west from
another. He rapidly became popular as a preacher in the parish, as a
counselor for its younger members, and as a welcome visitor in the
homes of the parishioners. At no time was there ever any question of
his probity; he had no desire to accumulate wealth; he drank seldom;
and those who knew him have always asserted that there was never in
him the slightest deviation from his vow of celibacy. "A grand young
priest" was the general judgment and impression.

When, after a couple of months, he had established a daily routine
and found out what amount of time was needed for his official duties
as an assistant, he started again to cultivate his two principal hobbies:
painting and English literature. Once he made a trip to New York to
talk with a publisher about a study of the poet, Gerard Manly
Hopkins, and he returned home full of enthusiasm for the project.

It was toward the end of 1961, a little over a year after his arrival at
St. Declan's, that the first traces of change became apparent in him.

On an average, Yves performed ceremonies of marriage three to five
times every month. He seemed to add a special note of solemnity, joy,
and celebration by his mere presence. His sermons on these occasions
were beautifully delivered. And it thrilled everyone present to see this
handsome and graceful young priest celebrating the love of the
newlyweds within the purlieu of the Church's holiness and God's
purity, and the Lordship of Jesus. For these were the themes on which
Yves preached again and again in modulated tones and poetic
language.

As time went on, however, Yves became more and more dissatisfied
with the marriage ceremonial as prescribed in the Roman Ritual, the
official handbook for priests that contains detailed instructions on how
priests are to celebrate the various sacraments. He felt that the words
and gestures assigned to the priest in performing a marriage ceremony
were not merely outmoded, but that they did not convey what modern
men and women thought and felt about marriage.

Above all, Yves found the actual words of the marriage vows more

110 THE CASES

and more repulsive and irrelevant. Here he was, standing in front of
two young people about to embark on a marvelous union and life
together; and, as official representative of the Church, all he could tell
them to do in the name of God and religion was to "stick it out," to
stay together no matter what happened, until they were parted by
death. Was that precisely what marriage partners promised each
other? he asked himself.

In the beginning, he made no change in the words of the actual
vows. But in his sermon at each marriage, he began to outline what the
marriage partners did really promise to each other.

In the first sermons he insisted that the partners were giving each
other what Jesus gave his Church. Jesus was the supreme model. Then,
as he developed this theme, he began to say more explicitly what it
was Jesus gave his Church.

Consciously now, Yves was drawing on what he had heard Father
"Bones" say at the seminary and what he had thought out by his own
reading of Teilhardian doctrines. Mixed with all he said were lines of
poetry about Jesus which he applied to the bridegroom and the bride.

In these sermons Jesus was pictured by Yves as the summit of
human development, the great Omega Point. He made all nature
beautiful, including the bodies and the love of married people. Jesus
was so dedicated to perfecting the material world that he was evolving
as that world's peak of perfection. In the same total way that Jesus
gave himself to this human world even to the point of dying like every
living element in it, so the marriage partners should, Yves pointed out,
adapt themselves to this world. They would find perfection primarily
in each other, secondarily in other people around them, then in nature,
in life, and finally in their dying and death.

All this was, of course, far from the normal teaching of Yves'
Church, according to which Jesus does not depend on the material
world in any way, and marriage is a sacrament which enables the
partners to live their lives with supernatural grace and to achieve
eternal life in heaven after death.

But the change in Yves' beliefs was not the strangest or most
dramatic thing about this early "enigmatic stage" of his possession.
What is relevant and striking is that Yves constantly found his
thoughts and words "coming" to him. Sometimes, having spoken to
the congregation in the church, he woke up to the fact that he had said
this or thought that without having willed it or even been conscious of

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 111

what he had done. It was not that his mind had wandered. It was a
sort of "remote control."

In fact, Yves' first clear idea of what was happening within himself
did not come because his clerical colleagues in the rectory and a few
parishioners objected to some of his thoughts and expressions. They
did, but this of itself did not bother Yves very much. He still relied on
his charm and his words to get him out of any incidental difficulties.

That "remote control" which was to increase in him until it became
paramount in his life — this was the first sign to him of something alien
within him. It had become apparent to him at first during his free
hours.

In his free time away from the church and his parish duties, Yves
tackled painting and writing much as any other artist. He would be in
the mood for painting or poetry. He would have some perceptions of
color, line, form, or spatial dimensions. The perceptions burned in his
imagination and inner sensibilities for some period of time. He would
sit down to paint, for instance, while he thus burned inside with
images, imaginings, flights of fancy and inner landscapes.

While doing initial drafts on canvas or paper, motivated by that not
unusual activity of his imagination, he normally experienced a special
inner perception which was always pleasurable. It was, Yves said, his
mind and will gathering in and enjoying the fruits of his imagination.
And there poured back into his imagination freshly burnished forms of
what originally had entered through his senses.

It was these burnished forms he tried to depict on canvas or to
express in his poetry. But even as he painted or wrote, he found his
memory of past things reviving and lighting up like a panel, pouring
assonances and shadings into his imagination. And his general effort
suddenly expanded and became richer as he tried to reproduce the
new form his experience had taken.

It was this rather normal creative routine that began to take a
peculiar turn; and it was always in strict relationship to some exterior
trouble or difficulty Yves had as a priest.

The most important occasion which he clearly remembers hinged
upon a bit of unpleasantness with the senior assistant in his parish. In
late September 1962, he had preached at a marriage. Afterward, the
senior assistant of the parish, who had been present at the ceremony,
admonished Yves about his sermon. "You are making marriage a
merely human thing," he argued. "It is a sacrament, a channel of

112 THE CASES

supernatural grace. The Lord Jesus is not going to evolve out of the
earth or a woman's body or from gases in the upper atmosphere."

The rebuke was potentially serious, but Yves had talked his way out
of it; the senior assistant was very firm, but he liked Yves, as everyone
did. For his part, Yves wanted no trouble. He liked his post too much.
But, afterwards, he had a deep surge of resentment about the whole
matter.

The following day was his weekly free day. In the morning, while he
was painting, the incident was still annoyingly in the forefront of his
mind. But there was also a peculiarity which he was quick to notice
and apparently powerless to prevent: he felt there were two parts of
him or two functions going on at the same time in him, each of them
working in different directions.

He went on painting, holding the brush, choosing colors, dipping,
painting, standing back and returning to his easel and continuing to
paint. All the while, the normal mechanism of his inner man was at
work — imagination, memory, mind, will.

But all that while, too, another and parallel process was going on.
His imagination was receiving data — images, impressions, forms —
from some source other than the outside world. He knew this because
they resembled nothing he had ever seen, heard, or thought. And then,
too, it seemed to him that these images were not assimilated by his
mind and will. Rather, they seemed to paralyze mind and will, to
freeze them so that bit by bit they went fallow. An entire idea — he
could not even make out its contours or details — was being "shoved"
into his mind and forced into his will for acceptance.

He resisted the "push" of the idea; but it eventually invaded his
mind and will through his imagination. And finally, as far as he could
make out, he yielded. Then that grossly strange idea flooded back into
his imagination with all its parts, reasons, and logic, there to be clothed
in new images. His mind even supplied words for those images and
sometimes, indeed, he found himself pronouncing these words in
whole sentences.

After about an hour, on the first vivid and eerie occasion of this
kind, he was shocked to discover that he was now painting in a strange
and completely alien fashion compared to his normal way. His canvas
had become a hodgepodge of his initial brushings, which he had
intended to portray a street scene. On top of them was a crazy quilt of
other forms and shapes — shadowy trees, rivers, irregular forms with
legs, squares with ears, loops that ended in numerals.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH II3

When he resisted that inner ''push" of ideas from that unknown
source, his painting followed the normal course. But when he yielded,
the hodgepodge started anew. He seemed to have become a means of
translating into pictorial images some message or instructions or
thoughts conveyed to him forcibly and not by his own choosing.

Yves felt alone and vulnerable. He was very disturbed. On an
impulse he decided to drive out to see some friends in the country. But
there was no letup. Along the way, he found he could no longer
concentrate on his driving, so great and distracting was the force of all
that was now pouring into him. He had to stop the car on the side of
the road. He sat there and tried to keep his mind and will free of all
those images and forms that were pounding at them from some source
he could not identify.

But as he intensified his struggle, another element crept to the fore:
his resentment about the previous day's argument with the senior
assistant. When Yves yielded to the "push" of the idea being "shoved"
into his mind, it brought with it some peculiar satisfaction in
resentment. When Yves resisted, the resentment smoldered there and
hurt him. In the brief pauses between these inner gyrations, Yves'
mind dwelt on what he had said during the sermon and elaborated the
ideas still further. He found intense satisfaction in this.

Eventually, as he sat beside the road, his planned visit with friends
forgotten, he found himself yielding willingly to the "push" of the
idea. And the moment he yielded, he felt immediate relief from an
internal pressure and a deep conviction that his resentment against the
senior assistant was justified: Yves had been right all along. He knew
what was going on. Besides, he found his imagination and feelings
once more chockful of inspiration which he knew would pour into his
sermons, his painting, and his poetry.

Yves points to this experience as the moment "remote control"
became a constant element in his life, because at that instant he
accepted it willingly. It was, so to speak, the "consecration" of Yves'
possession.

Once he voluntarily accepted it — and he insists today that he knew
he was accepting some "remote" or "alien" control — he was suddenly
inundated. He still had not moved from his car. All around him was
soft-spoken countryside. But every sense — eyes, ears, taste, smell,
touch — was saturated with a discordant medley of experiences. A riot
of sounds, colors, odors, tastes, skin feelings washed over him. He
could distinguish a certain rhythmic beat throughout this confusion

114 THE CASES

and din. But he had no control and could not shake himself loose from
these perceptions. Throughout, he felt a certain privileged awe, a
secret pride. Then the storm in his senses gathered up inside him
somewhere, absorbing utterly his imagination and memory. He now
felt as if serpentine thoughts were touching the furthest reaches of his
mind, and that fine tendrils were closing around each fiber of his will.

Slowly he began again to be conscious of the world around him.
What had occurred had taken only moments, but for those moments
he had been totally abstracted, walled up within himself.

Sound and light and shape now wafted back through the trellis of
his senses, making him a newly aware observer of the world. He heard
birds singing once more; he felt the sunlight on his face again. The
coolness of the wind and the smell of morning-fresh grass and flowers
became vivid for him. But now each lattice of sensation was filled by
some coiling presence weaving slowly, possessively, with ease, lazily
enjoying an acquired resting place in the shaded corners of his being.

For a brief instant, there was some echo of resistance in him. Some
ancient voice protested in dim tones. Then it ceased. Yves "let go,"
and all tension fled. He was at peace for the first time in many years.
And he felt renewed. There was a sudden ease throughout his body
and an almost fierce, certainly overpowering calm flooding his
thoughts.

He was never more conscious of being "visited." And every image
he ever had of those who had been "visited" by "another" came
tumbling from his memory: Moses at the burning bush; Isaiah catching
sight of the flaming seraphs in the temple of Yahweh; Mary the Virgin
in Nazareth bowing before Gabriel the messenger; Jesus transfigured
with Moses and Elias on Mount Tabor and conversing with God; St.
John in his Patmos cavern gazing at the Mystic Lamb in all his glory;
Constantine galvanized by the Cross in the clouds; Joan of Arc in her
prison cell tearfully hearing her "voices" in the depths of pain; John of
the Cross in his prison cell piercing the Dark Night and embracing the
Beloved; Teilhard fingering the bones of Sinanthropos and seeing
Jesus, Omega Point, prefigured in those pathetic pieces. Yves had a
clear sense of being destined, as all those had been, for a special
revelation.

All this rushed by him and fell away as he raised his eyes and looked
again at the fields, the trees, the sky. All was now moving in a new
vision, animated by a life he had dreamed of, but never known. It was
all, he now knew, a sacrament, a row of sacraments strung together as

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH II5

a lovely necklace around man's world. And his mind, will, and inner
senses were permeated with a strange new incense consecrating
him — as no bishop's hands could ever do — to the priesthood of a new
being. He knew: always it had been so near him and yet so far.
"Beauty, ever ancient, ever new! Too late have I known thee!" he
murmured Augustine's quiet regret.

There was awe at the surprise of it all, humbleness at not having
seen it all before. And, dominantly, an enthusiasm lush with passion.
The coiling presence stirred in him; and he began to daydream.

"Hey, Father! Having any trouble?" The shout startled Yves. It was
a local state trooper who had drawn alongside in his patrol car. Yves
snapped his head around, angry at the interruption, his eyes blazing.
But the genial smile of the trooper reassured him. They knew each
other. "Just passing a few moments in peace, Pat," he said, recovering
himself and reaching for the ignition key. "Give Jane and the kids my
love."

With a wave of his hand he continued on his way to see his friends.

From then on, Yves became extremely careful. It was as if he had
been put on his guard. He knew with an almost uncanny foresight
when trouble was in store for him. At times he was forewarned about a
particular person. "Someone" told him. At other times the warning
concerned activities: a request to solemnize a marriage, a request for
confessions, an invitation to dinner at a parishioner's house or with his
fellow priests; or it might be a book or article in a magazine or a letter.
The warning was silent, but clear and pithy: "Avoid it!" or "Don't do
it!" or "Don't meet them!" Except for an occasional flourish in a
sermon, his colleagues found no further reason to cavil at his ideas.

But when he spoke privately with parishioners, with an engaged
couple about to be married, for example, it was different. Then he
explained their union so poetically, and he dwelt so insistingly on the
peculiarly earthly role of Jesus, that they always departed completely
charmed by his counseling.

Yves himself clearly explains now how the entire purpose, meaning,
and reason of marriage as a Sacrament had changed for him. It had
become a Sacrament of nature for him. It had lost its dimension as a
channel of supernatural grace, just as the senior assistant had warned
him. It was something that united people with the natural universe.
And this meant there had been some deep damage to Yves' own faith.

As time went by, and Yves introduced this same dark element to the
other Sacraments, his own condition became far more extreme; and he

Il6 THE CASES

himself began to sense more clearly the meaning of his voluntary
commitment to a force he now could not control. The moment for
possible resistance had passed.

In 1963, Yves' situation became critical for him. Saying Mass was a
prime example. The servers and the people found that he began to
take a longer time to say Mass. Peculiarly enough, it was only one part
of the Mass that took the additional time. It was the most solemn
section immediately preceding the Consecration that begins when the
priest extends his hands, palms downward, fingers together, over the
chalice and the bread. The ceremonial calls for complete silence,
broken only by the tinkling of the Mass bell. Yves would now remain
for abnormal lengths of time, with his hands outstretched — at first only
three minutes, then ten, then fifteen, once thirty agonizing additional
minutes, with congregation and attendants waiting and watching.
Then he would take an abnormally long time to utter the actual words
of Consecration. At an ordinary pace, all these ceremonial actions take
no more than three to five minutes.

His colleagues thought he was going through a "mystical" period, or
that he was suffering from "religious scruples," that he took too
seriously each official prescription for the actions and words of the
Mass. Some priests go through such a phase. They know that any
deviation can result in venial or mortal sin. So they torture themselves,
making sure they observe all the rules; they go back again and again
repeating actions and words, to make sure they consciously do
everything correctly.

But Yves neither was mystical nor was he paralyzed by religious
scruples. He was undergoing what he now describes as the most
agonizing whipping and thrashing of his inner self. It began one day
when, as he tells it, from the moment that his hands were outstretched
over the chalice and the bread, until after the Consecration, the
"remote control" changed in force and in its "message."

"I fought every inch of the way," Yves recounts today, "and I lost
every inch of that fight."

Instead of the officially prescribed words of the Mass and the
concepts expressed in those words, Yves now found different concepts
and different words. It was always and only key words that were
changed. Every time, for instance, the word "saving" or "salvation"
was ritually prescribed, he could only think and say "winning" and
"triumph." "Saving" and "salvation" appeared to him like words

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 117

scribbled on bits of torn paper and pinned to a wall out of his reach.
To reach for them impotently was the source of intense agony and
searing pain.

Similarly with "love" (this now became "pride"), "died" and
"death" (now "returned home to death" and "nothingness"), "sac-
rifice" (now "defiance"), "sins" (now "myths and fables"), "bread"
and "wine" (now "desire" and "pleasure"). So it went.

An additional agony ensued whenever a sign of the cross was called
for by the ritual, when Yves would find only the index finger of his
right hand capable of motion, and it could trace only a vertical line
upward.

Throughout, his memory and reflexes propelled him to act according
to the ritual. The substitute words and thoughts poured in. He
recognized immediately that the sense and intent of the whole
ceremony was changed utterly by those new words and thoughts. He
fought with will and mind to retain the ritual. But each time it was the
same: as long as he fought, some hard lump seemed to start expanding
deep within him — not in his body, not in his brain, but in his living
consciousness. "It was like remembering last night's nightmare and
knowing that this reality was what frightened you then." As the lump
expanded, it began to reduce in a sinister fashion the area of his very
self.

At the excruciating limit of this inner pain, it began to have a
physical and psychological ricochet: the blood roared in his ears and
peculiar pains started — his hair, eyelashes, and toenails ached unbear-
ably. Quick kaleidoscopic pictures of his entire life tumbled in front of
his mind, always making him look ludicrous, smelly, contemptible,
beyond help. He could hear himself beginning to form a scream,
which, if it had emerged, would have been: "I'm drowning! I'm
perishing! Save me!"

It never emerged. He stopped fighting. All agony ceased. And a
marvelous exhilaration — not unmixed with relief — flooded him. The
ease was almost painful in its contrast with the pain that had preceded
it.

The final agony came one day when he started to pronounce the
words of Consecration. Instead of "This is My Body" and "This is My
Blood," other words echoed in his own voice: "This is My Tombstone"
and "This is My Sexuality." As he pronounced these words while
bending over the altar as prescribed by the ritual, all intent of

Il8 THE CASES

authentic Consecration fled from him. His index finger bent into a
hook shape, thrust itself into the wine, and then scratched a vertical
red stain on the white wafer.

At that moment, Yves could not straighten up. His ears were filled
with two different sounds. He was sure he actually heard them: a
jeering laugh that echoed and echoed and echoed; and a faint keening,
a muted wail or cry of protest which eventually died away in the
reverberations of that heinous laugh. Then, as from that "remote
control," he heard the syllables: "Jesus is now Jonathan," and
"Jonathan is now Yves," and "Yves is now Jonathan and Jesus." And
finally, "All is gathered into Mr. Natural."

It was some time before Yves realized that only he had heard all
those profanities. But whether they heard those words or not, it was
Yves' appearance after those painfully extended moments of inward
battle that shocked the people who watched him. When he turned
around finally to distribute communion, his face was terribly drawn,
haggard, the color of chalk. His hair, cut short then, seemed to be
standing on end. His eyes, normally so impressively clear and winning,
were narrowed to slits; and he was muttering through clenched teeth.
The whole impression was stark and lifeless.

He finished the Mass in a violent state of inner tension. Only after
some time spent alone was he once more flooded with that strange
peace and exultation. Finally, when he had recovered himself alone in
the vesting room, he emerged smiling, composed, looking as he had
always looked.

His yielding to the "control" at Mass had immediate and far-reach-
ing effects. In baptizing infants, he changed the Latin words, which
were unintelligible to the parents and bystanders. When he was
supposed to say, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit," he said, "I baptize you in the name of the Sky,
the Earth, and Water."

But the most momentous change in his performance both of
Baptism and the other Sacraments (Extreme Unction, Confession)
affected those parts which spoke of "Satan" or the "Devil" or "evil
spirits."

At Baptism, instead of saying (in Latin), "Depart, Unclean Spirit" or
"To renounce Satan and all his works" or "Become a child of God," he
now said, "Depart, spirit of hate for the Angel of Light," and "To
renounce all exile of Prince Lucifer," and "Become a member of the
Kingdom."

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH II9

In Confession, he stopped saying, "I absolve you of your sins in the
name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"; instead, he
said, "1 confirm you in your natural wishes, in the name of Sky, Earth,
and Water." And when he administered the Sacrament of the Dying
("Extreme Unction" was its old name), he committed the dying person
to the mercy and peace of "Sister Earth" and to the eternity of
"Mother Nature."

Whenever he felt an initial repugnance to accepting what was
"dictated" to him by the "remote control," that frightful inner lump
grew sensitive; and Yves became a being of pure pain. Pie quickly
obeyed, and he was rewarded always by a wild exultation. The sun
was brighter. The blue of the sky was deeper. The coffee he drank was
never so good. The blood coursed vigorously in his veins. And his head
never felt clearer.

By the end of 1964, it became obvious to his colleagues there was
something wrong with Yves that they could no longer explain by his
artistic temperament, his French Canadian-Swedish ancestry, a
mystical period of life, or religious scruples. It was all too peculiar. It
frightened some. It repelled others. It angered still others. It left all
with an eerie sense of something utterly alien in Yves. And to cap it all,
Yves had begun to refer to himself as "Father Jonathan."

But it was always isolated things, and nobody ever put them all
together into a definite pattern. When he turned around at Mass (as
the priest did four or five times) to say "Dominas vobiscum" ("The
Lord be with you"), one colleague swore he heard Yves say, "Do-minus
Lucis vobiscum" ("The Lord of Light be with you"). Others did not
hear that single added word, but the faint glint in his eyes gave them a
momentary shock. Once, as he touched the forehead of a baby he was
baptizing, the baby went into violent hysteria and had to be rushed to
the hospital for treatment.

All such incidents taken individually were susceptible of perfectly
rational explanations. But his visit to a boy dying of bone cancer was
the final incident that led ultimately to his abandonment of his post.

It was at the end of 1966. The boy, the fourteen-year-old red-haired
son of Irish immigrant parents, was to be anointed: death was certain
and imminent. Before the priest, Father Yves, arrived, the boy asked
his mother to wash his face and hands and help him put on his favorite
shirt and tie. He also asked his father to turn his bed toward the door,
because, he said, there was a dark thing in the corner of the room.

When Yves arrived, all went normally until Yves endeavored to

120 THE CASES

straighten the bed, making the boy again face the "darkened" corner.
The boy started to scream: "No! Father! No! Please! Mother!" Then as
his mother ran in and Yves, having straightened the bed, stood over
toward that particular corner, the boy started to weep uncontrollably.

Yves does not remember all the boy said, but he does recall certain
words and sentences: "darkness," "they smile at each other," "he
hates Jesus," "save me," "I don't want to go with them."

Finally the boy's father apologetically requested Yves to leave and
come back the next day. But his mother telephoned Yves' superior, the
pastor of the parish. The pastor came an hour later, anointed the boy,
and waited for the end, which came quickly.

The incident was the last straw. And now everything known and
remarked about Yves for the previous three years was put together.

The pastor and his senior assistant said nothing to Yves, but they
spent about three months gathering information and watching Yves
closely. In addition to the peculiarities mentioned already, they
received a puzzling report they could not make head or tail of. A man
answering Yves' description periodically lived in a loft in Greenwich
Village, New York. His appearances there always coincided with Yves'
vacations and the free days when he was away from his home parish.

They found out that the loft was known as the Shrine of the New
Being; that the man was called Father Jonathan; that he held services
for all and sundry: said Mass, performed marriages, heard confessions,
ordained men and women as priests of the Shrine, baptized infants and
adults, went on call to homes and hospitals where the dying lay; and
that he had one other specific rite, which he called the Bearing of the
Light. Its initiated members were called the Light-Bearers. But no
details about either members or their rites were available.

Just at the moment that a full written report was ready and about to
be sent to the bishop, Yves seemed to have been alerted — however
late — to the intentions of his colleagues. For about two months his
behavior, as far as anyone could judge, was absolutely normal. He
never went to Greenwich Village. He worked hard.

Then, in mid-June 1967, when all concerned were just about to
dismiss the whole affair as exaggerated and irrelevant, Yves had his
first terrible seizure. Predictably, perhaps, it was at Mass.

When he had stretched his hands out, palms downward over the
chalice, he suddenly started to weep and groan and sway. One hand
clamped down roughly over the chalice. The other fell resoundingly on
the white wafer of bread. The servers called the pastor. He, together

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 121

with the two other assistants, could not physically dislodge Yves'
hands, or move the chalice, or stop Yves' weeping and groaning. He
and the chalice and the bread were rooted physically to their place as
if by rivets. He became incontinent on the altar.

By that time, the pastor had emptied the church and locked the
doors. They were about to call a doctor when Yves suddenly let go of
the chalice and the bread. He seemed to be flung backward, tumbling
down the three steps of the altar and falling heavily to the marble floor
of the sanctuary. He was unconscious when they reached him.

He awoke about an hour later. When the pastor spoke with him,
Yves disclosed to him that his mother had been epileptic, and he
pleaded with the pastor not to put him to shame publicly. He would go
away in order to rest, follow a doctor's advice after a checkup, and all
would be well.

But now the pastor believed the worst. In his eyes, Father Yves must
be possessed. The pastor's conclusion was no more than a deep
conviction based on his personal reactions. But even so, it was a
serious matter, and it would not be dropped or postponed again until
the pastor was sure one way or the other. A discreet inquiry revealed
that Sybil, Yves' mother, was not epileptic. In a long Sunday morning
interview, the bishop was told the whole story, including the pastor's
worst fears. That was in June at the seminary, where the bishop was
ordaining the new young priests.

The bishop called in Father David M. for consultation.

After his consultation with the bishop, Father David had an
interview with Yves. He came away completely baffled. Not only did
Yves cooperate fully with him, but whatever Yves said seemed to
strike a sympathetic chord in David. The only two peculiarities he
could not explain satisfactorily were Yves' constant use of his new
name, Jonathan, and the condition of Yves' right index finger.

The name David could accept. After all, only ten years before,
David had started to call himself, or at least to sign letters to his
intimate friends, as "Pierre" (after Teilhard de Chardin); and he had
taken a lot of leg-pulling from his colleagues about that. And the name
"Bones" had stuck to David chiefly because David, once he heard the
name, deliberately used it several times during his lectures; he liked it.

The finger was another matter. According to the doctor who had
X-rayed it, no bone was broken and no nerve was shattered. The
problem could in no way be traced to the supposed epileptic history of

122 THE CASES

Yves' mother. There was calcification in the finger; but the deformity
could not be traced to a blow or injury; and no calcification could be
found elsewhere in Yves' body. He was found not to be arthritic.

For the rest of it, David could not find much to be alarmed about.
He had checked out Yves' mother: she had, indeed, been subject to
some sort of seizures, but the doctors who examined her always ruled
out epilepsy. That much left David relieved. But he still came away
baffled. He was convinced that he had missed something essential; and
he felt foolish without knowing why. His discussion with Yves had
covered both the doctrine Yves professed as a priest and Yves' own
spirituality. As far as David could make out, both doctrine and
spirituality coincided more or less with his own.

"If Yves is in error," David told the bishop later, "then so am I. Now
what do I do?"

The bishop eyed David speculatively for a while. Then he said
softly: "I suppose if all this paleontology and de Chardin's teachings
were to lead you to a point where you had to choose faith or de
Chardin, you would choose faith, Father David."

It was a statement of fact, with an implied question. David glanced
at the bishop, who was now looking out the window of his study with
his back to David.

The bishop continued. "Tell me, Father. Is evolution as much a fact
as, say, the salvation of us all by Jesus?"

David faced the question with its now distant echoes of the
foreboding he had felt the day the bishop had named him to the post
of exorcist. Today he says his first reaction to the question was
surprise: "It's as if I had neglected something final, and the time was
coming when I would have to face it." Deep in his mind, he realized,
he had spontaneously said, "Yes."

To the bishop he answered by rising and saying something to the
effect that it was like comparing apples and oranges. And the bishop
apparently wanted only to put the question. He was far too old and
wise a man always to expect precise answers.

After this interview with his bishop, David was not at peace. He
made up his mind to see Yves the following day.

What he proposed to Yves was quite simple. After much thought, it
seemed to David that they should conduct a ceremony in which they
would say special prayers for the sick and against disease, and in which
they would also go through the main parts of the Exorcism ritual. He,

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 123

David, would conduct a simple exorcism. The idea, he told Yves, was
to satisfy the bishop and the pastor.

Yves saw no difficulty. He would like that, he said. Only Yves' pastor
would be present; no trouble was anticipated.

They performed the exorcism in the private oratory of the seminary,
all three men kneeling in the pews normally occupied by the
seminarians. Yves answered in a low murmur all the questions put to
him by David as exorcist. "Do you believe in God?" "Do you believe
in Jesus Christ, Our Lord?" "Do you renounce the Devil and all his
works and pomps?" and so on.

Yves kissed the crucifix; and, jabbing his crooked index finger into
the holy-water font, he blessed himself.

David and the pastor rose to their feet at the end of the ceremony.
Yves had not budged from his place where he knelt with his face in his
hands. They both went out quietly, leaving him alone.

"That's that," said David with a sigh of relief.

"I did not hear one clear word from him," rejoined the pastor, "but
I suppose I'd be as subdued as he was in the same circumstances."

In the oratory, Yves raised his face from his hands a few minutes
later and looked around; he was alone; and he could not remember
much. He remembered coming in with David and the pastor, kneeling
down, and opening the ritual book. But that was all. For the 15
minutes of the exorcism ceremony he had completely blacked out.
When he knelt down, it was as if a powerful sedative had been
injected into him. He remembered nothing except a sudden compul-
sion forcing his lips to speak and his limbs to move.

He waited a moment now, then looked toward the altar. All was
normal on the altar; but between him and it a bulky, formless shadow
hung in the air blotting out all sight of the crucifix over the altar and of
the stained-glass windows behind the altar. Then, abruptly but calmly,
like a man remembering a decision he had made or some instructions
from a superior, Yves rose and left the oratory. A seminarian he met at
the door caught sight of Yves' face: it was glowing and laughing.

That evening, as David sat in his study, he could not concentrate on
the work in hand. He was supposed to finish a paper for a conference
on de Chardin's work at Choukoutien, China, where the Jesuit had
unearthed the fossil of Sinanthropos. But David's mind kept going
back again and again to the bishop's question: "Is evolution as much a

124 THE CASES

fact as the salvation of us all by Jesus?" A foolish question, he told
himself. No meaning to it at all. The bishop was of the old school. But
still it kept bothering him.

He looked up at the glass cases where all his beloved fossils and
paleontological treasures were exhibited. His eyes traveled over a
chipped skull casing, the collection of anklebones, the pieces of
ancient rock in which flora and fauna fossils were embedded, and the
series of reconstructed busts: Solo Man, Rhodesian Man, Neanderthal
Man, Cro-Magnon Man. His mind was playing tricks with him: not
only were the plaster busts looking at him, he thought, but these dead
and broken human bones seemed to be speaking without sound.

Then his head cleared. He got angry with himself. Had a choice to
be made between evolution and Jesus? Must it be made? If Jesus were
the culmination of it all, there was no such choice to be made. Jesus
and evolution were one in some deep way or other.

He hung along the edge of these considerations for a while. Then on
a sudden impulse he went over to the house phone and called to the
guest room where Yves was spending the night.

"Hello, Yves — eh — Jonathan," he stumbled.

"Hello, Father," Yves answered in a calm and pleasant tone.

"I just had an idea, Jonathan. About evolution and all that, I mean.
Supposing Teilhard was wrong all the time and his whole theory and
evolution itself was irreconcilable with the divinity of Jesus, what
would you say?"

There was a short pause. Then in a level voice with a certain note of
hidden triumph, Yves said: "You seem to be asking this to yourself and
for the first time, Father David!"

"But what do you say, Yves — Jonathan, excuse me," David insisted.
"I am now asking yon."

"There can never be any such conflict, Father David" — David
began to feel some relief — "for the simple reason that evolution makes
Jesus possible. And only evolution can do that." Yves remembers the
conversation very well. The "remote control" was on him again with a
strong compulsion; he waited until the thoughts and words came to
him. Then he continued quietly, but with the emphasis of one in
possession of some superior or additional knowledge. "Father David,
all I have become, you made me. My spirituality and my beliefs and
my explanations all come from you. You also know that evolution
makes it possible for us to believe in Jesus; it makes Jesus possible for
us as rational men. Don't you, Father David?"

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 125

At the other end of the telephone, David caught his breath sharply.
As Yves' words hit his ears, the thoughts and images they conveyed
pushed past all his mental safeguards like rough visitors. He felt an
invasion of himself such as he had never known before. He struggled
for a moment: "Do you really think . . ."

"Father David, you have the testimony of your own conscience and
your conscious mind." Then, with terrible deliberateness and a hard
note in his voice that completely destroyed David's self-confidence:
"After all, if I had to be exorcised, you also need it. Perhaps it is both
of us who needed it. Or, perhaps — and this is a better idea — we are
both beyond exorcism." The telephone clicked and went dead.

David was stunned. Within a few hours, he decided to telephone
the bishop. Before he could say a word, he was given the latest news:
Yves had gone to the bishop that evening, resigned from the diocese,
and left with some friends for New York.

From that time onward until the marriage by the sea, David did not
see much of Yves, though he heard about him constantly as Father
Jonathan.

But now David had a problem of his own: had he in some way or
other been contaminated? Had he yielded to the Evil One? Had he
voluntarily, although under the veil of goodness and wisdom, admitted
the influence of the Devil into his own personal life?

He thought back over the exorcism. Come to think of it now, Yves
was not the only one who had mumbled the Latin words. He himself
had mumbled them, his mind had been absent half the time thinking
of other problems.

David did not realize it then, but he would not enjoy any peace
until the exorcism of Yves had been accomplished some two years
later.

When Father Jonathan, as Yves now called himself, came to stay in
Greenwich Village, he chose at first to work among its inhabitants,
seeking neophytes and converts for his cause. He hung around the
popular discotheques and bars, joined the clubs, took part in several of
the "happenings" organized by the various Village groups of the time.
He became known for what he claimed to be: the founder of a new
religion.

But after a year of this apostolate, Jonathan's emphasis changed. He
no longer consorted with the ordinary denizens of the Village. He had
a different mission: to create a new religious movement among the

126 THE CASES

well-heeled families of upper Manhattan. Initially he became good
friends with a few people he met by chance. As time went on, he
enlarged his circle. Soon he had enough voluntary contributions to
enlarge and decorate his Shrine of the Loft, as he called it. And there,
every Wednesday evening, he held services, administered the new
"Sacraments,'' and counseled the members of his "parish."

By the autumn of 1968, he had attracted a solid congregation who
found that Jonathan, far from being an iconoclast or a preacher of
strange doctrines, seemed to revive in them a new sense of religious
belief and a trust in the future. His message was simple. He couched it
in beautiful language. He strewed his addresses with a genuine
knowledge of art and poetry. And, most especially, he had a knack of
suffusing everything with esthetic values. He could preach on the
Missing Link, for example, or a picture of Neanderthal Man, and make
the entire idea of evolution from inanimate matter appear a glorious
beginning. For the future, Jonathan had a still more glorious outlook.
There was a new being in process now, he told his congregations; and
it would live in a new time. "New Being" and "New Time" became
his watchwords.

Jonathan's outlook and his intuition of the rather sinister "New
Being" came just in time to fill a vacuum felt by many people. The
vacuum had begun to appear many years before Jonathan's arrival; its
effects in theater, poetry, and art had been felt far and wide during
preceding decades. All — poetry, theater, and art — had constantly
lamented the fact that man's world had increasingly sacrificed
meaning for usefulness. And without any further meaning, without the
possibility of some transcendence, that world, however "useful,"
ceases to nourish the spirit of men and women and children. Without
that nourishment, the spirit of man must die.

In the area of religion and especially of Roman Catholicism, the
vacuum became widely visible and tangible in the late 1960s, when
the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council had taken
effect. The new changes did away with much of the ancient
symbolism — its mystery and its immemorial associations. The changes
might have evolved into something worthwhile, except for the strange
vacuum that now seized Roman Catholics and religious people in
general.

Its effect seemed sudden. And it was numbing. For it was a vacuum
of indifference: to the external rites — words, actions, objects — proper

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 127

to religion; to the concepts of religious thought and theology; and to
the functions and character of religious people — priests, rabbis,
ministers, bishops, popes — to all of these was now applied the norm of
"usefulness": form equals function; but, beyond practical use, there is
meaning. The externals of religion no longer seemed to have any
compelling significance. Increasing numbers of people laid them aside,
or ignored them, or used them as mere social conveniences and
conventional signposts.

Jonathan's message was simple and geared to this new situation. All
the beauty of being human had, he said, been obscured by religious
theorizing and institutional churches. But now is a new time, he
preached: all is and always was really natural. Good meant natural.
We did not need such artificial supports as organized religions had
supplied. We must just rediscover the perfectly natural. Everywhere
in the world around us there were natural sacraments, natural shrines,
natural holiness, natural immortality, natural deity. There was a
natural grace and overwhelming natural beauty. Furthermore, in spite
of the chasm that institutional religion had dug between humans and
the nature of the world, the world and all humans were one in some
naturally mystical union. We came from that union and by death we
went back into it. Jonathan called that natural union ''Abba Father."

In effect, Jonathan made a fateful synthesis of Teilhardian evolu-
tionary doctrines and Teilhard's idea of Jesus. And he permeated it
with a deep humanism and had a knowing eye for the yawning
indifference now gripping traditional Christian believers.

In Jonathan's outlook, "religious" belief became easy again. At one
pole, one could accept the currently pervasive idea that man evolved
from inanimate matter. At the other, one had no need to aim at
believing in an unimaginable "resurrection" of the body. Instead,
there was a return "to where we came from," as Jonathan used to say:
a going back to the oneness of nature and of this universe.

All this allowed the clever use of the full range of vocabulary and
concept about "salvation," "divine love," "hope," "goodness," "evil,"
"honesty" — all terms and ideas that were already so comforting and
familiar to his congregation. But all these terms were understood in a
sense completely different from the traditional one: minus a supernat-
ural god, minus a man-god called Jesus, and minus a supernatural
condition called "personal afterlife."

Jonathan's congregation was never very large — never more than

128 THE CASES

about 150 people. But he drew deep satisfaction from it all; for in his
mind, all this was a preparation for the glorious New Time which was
just around the corner — at the Shrine of the Loft.

But there were deep consequences for Jonathan. As time went on,
and the spring of 1969 approached, he found more and more that, in
the literal sense of the words, "he was not his own man" any longer.
Outsiders — his flock, his friends — noticed no difference beyond that he
had let his golden hair grow longer, that he wore exotic clothes, and
that his language became very exalted.

With the passage of time, however, Jonathan's "movement" seemed
to be in danger of petering out — before the New Time started! He was
getting no new followers. His doctrine and outlook did not easily
accommodate the more flamboyant upheavals of the 1960s. He was no
revolutionary in the political sense. The Shrine of the Loft was clearly
on the wane before it had really taken off. He needed something new.

Meanwhile, Jonathan would wake up in the middle of the night and
find his mind full of strange impulses coming from that "remote
control." He kept finding himself packing a bag and preparing for a
journey. He spent long hours alone in his Shrine; and later he did not
know what he had been doing there all that time. The "remote
control" was inexorable in its domination. He had to wait until he was
told what to do. While waiting for that order, he performed marriages
and birth celebrations for his few followers. He held weekly services.
He dreamed constantly of starting a new priesthood and a new church
that would sweep the ranks of Catholics and Protestants.

Toward the end of the summer of 1969, Jonathan's "instructions"
started to come in earnest. He was invited to spend three weeks in the
Canadian wilds with a party of friends who annually went there to
hunt and fish.

Jonathan knew the moment he received the letter of invitation that
this was it. Some inner voice kept telling him: "Go! Go! You will now
find your mirror of eternity. Ordination to the supreme priesthood is at
hand!" When asked if he heard an actual voice on this occasion, he
denies this. It was an inner conviction coming with the same firmness
of all his other "instructions" and exercising the same irresistible
compulsion, far beyond the effect of mere words.

With Jonathan, the hunting party numbered 12 people. They lodged
at a base camp. Each day they split up into groups. Each group
departed for two- to four-day treks in the wilderness.

Apart from some fishing, Father Jonathan busied himself with

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 12Q

painting and writing. But after the first week, he found himself
venturing alone farther and farther from the base camp. He was
looking for something or some place. When he came on it, he would
recognize it, he knew. His walks always followed the course of a river
on whose bank the base camp stood. He could easily find his way home
by retracing his steps along the river.

It was on one of these forays that he found his place — as he called it
later. That name, "my place," has now a grisly significance for
Jonathan: there his final immersion in demonic possession was
accomplished.

One day after lunch, he had been walking for about three hours in a
southerly direction along the river. For those hours, the course of the
waters had run fairly straight. At a certain spot, however, Jonathan
noticed that the river entered between two high ridges of ground and
that within them it described an S-shape. When Jonathan reached the
farther curve of the S-shape, his whole body and mind suddenly
became electrified with a sense of discovery. He stood stock-still, one
Latin word — sacerdos (priest) — ringing like a clear bell in his ears.
Sacerdos!

That was it! This was the place! Here he would be ordained truly as
priest of the New Being and Bishop-Leader of the New Time. This was
it! He felt full of gratitude.

The place was beautiful. The water in that corner was not more
than a few feet deep. The center of the riverbed was a soft, shifting
carpet of sand as white as salt. On each side, like rows of attendant
black-cowled monks, there were tiers of boulders and rocks, rounded
and smoothed by the overflow of water during the yearly flooding of
the river. In the corners of the S-shape, on each bank, there was a
small, shelving beach of that pure white carpet of sand sloping up out
of the water to a rim of blue and black pebbles, then ferns and grass,
then the pines, alders, sycamores, chestnuts. Everything burned in the
sun, and silent shadows gloomed over rock and sand and river to make
a patchwork of green half-darkness in the yellow light.

Jonathan could see a hundred summer suns mirrored in the
green-gray water, and each of them gave off a fire that dazzled him.
The river moved slowly, but not sluggishly, all the while singing a
pervasive refrain of calm and constancy.

The place was Jonathan's "mirror of eternity," an opening in nature
through which he could glimpse the strength of eternity, its softness
and cleansing power, and the boundless spaces of its being.

130 THE CASES

Jonathan fell stunned and crying on the beach. Stretched out full
length, face down, his hands digging into the sand, he kept shouting:
"Sacerdos! Sacerdos! Sacerdos! Sacerdos!" His cries ricocheted off the
rocks and the trees, each echo coming back fainter and fainter as if
traveling away with his petitions and hopes, until he found himself
listening silently.

The wetness of the sand soaked into his clothes, and the sun warmed
his back. He began to feel a buoyancy all through his body: some
mighty hand held him on its palm. He heard himself saying almost
plaintively: "Make me . . . make me, please . . . make me . . .
priest . . . priest-make ..." Every word was spoken into the white
sand beneath his face.

Now thoughts, emotions, imaginings, all seemed to be under the
control of that hand. And he began to feel an emptying sensation. His
past was being erased; his entire past, what he remembered and even
what he had forgotten, all that had entered into the making of what he
had been up to that moment, was being flushed from him. He was
being emptied of every concept, every logical reasoning, every
memory and image which his culture, his religion, his ambient, his
reading had formed in him.

Then, under some inner impulse which he questioned no longer, he
rose and went slowly into the water. He stood in midstream looking at
the sky for a moment. Obeying the inner voice, he bent down; his
hands groped at the base of a rock and sought to reach to where its
roots went deep in water. The river swirled caressingly over his
shoulders and back. His chin now was almost level with the surface.

"I was reaching for the veined heart of our world," he told me in
one of our conversations, "to where Jesus, the Omega Point, was
evolving and evolving, and was on the threshold of emerging."

It seemed to him that "only this world was forgiving and cleansing,"
it alone had "united elements." He had the impression that now at last
he had "broken through," and that the revelation of all revelations had
been granted him: the real truth, the real god, the real Jesus, the real
holiness, the real sacrament, the real being, and the new time in which
all this newness would inevitably take over.

He lost count of ordinary time, of the sun and the wind, of the river
and its banks. The wind was a great rushing bird whose wings
dovetailed into the green and brown arms of the trees on either side of
him. The rocks became living things, his brothers and sisters, his
millennial cousins, witnessing his consecration with the reverence that

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 131

only nature had. And the water around him winked with gleaming
eyes as it sang the song it had learned millions of years ago, from the
swirling atoms of space, before there was any world and man to hear
it. It was an irresistible ecstasy for Jonathan.

He began to chant to himself: "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" Then this
became "Lord of Light! Lord of Light! Lord of Light!" Once again he
had no control. Every fiber and sinew in his body and mind was
flooded with a dusky power. Now he was chanting: "Lord of Light!
Lord of Jesus and of all things! Your slave! Your servant! Your
creature! Your priest!"

He felt a soft relaxation throughout himself; he had now no trace of
tension, no anticipation, no forward-looking thought or emotion. All
was wrapped up and contained in the now, the here-present.

He rose to his feet in the shallow water and faced the bank; his
hands, bleeding from his efforts to dig for the bottom of that rock,
hung by his sides. He looked at the scratches and tears in his fingers
and palms, loving the gleam of blood in the sunshine on the
background of his clean skin.

Slowlv he walked up the beach. For no reason his pace quickened.
He started to trot. Once past the sand and on solid ground, he ran
zigzagging through the trees, propelled by the force within him. The
ground sloped upward. Still running, he was out of breath as he
reached the top of the slope. He began to falter and stumble.

He reached out for support. But on every side the tall, rough bodies
of the pine trees, their branches many times his height off the ground,
their heads lost in the sky, were the only things near to him; and they
gave no help.

Through the haze of his sweat and weariness he saw on the ridge he
was approaching a small tree with branches near the ground. He
stumbled, fell, got up, and labored until he fell against the tree trunk,
his outstretched arms falling on the short branches sticking out on
either side. He leaned there a while, his cheek against the tree, his
armpits resting on the branches, catching his breath and sobbing half
syllables, waiting for his strength to return.

But he became aware that his face was lying against something
smooth: this was no rough pine bark or knotty sycamore skin. He
opened his eyes slowly, easing himself to a standing position and drew
back from the tree wonderingly.

With a growing horror he could not control, he now saw it in clear
outline: a bare tree trunk, stripped of all its bark, severed to a quarter

132 THE CASES

of its original height by some force — a lightning bolt, a random axe,
some accident. It was a withered tree trunk with only two stubby
arms. Blood stained the putty-white surface of those mute cross-pieces
and its withered trunk.

He was standing in front of a cross, he thought with a fierce horror
and revulsion. There's blood on it. My blood? Or whose blood? His
blood? Whose blood? The questions were hysterical cries of fear in his
brain.

He started to shout. "Curse it! Curse him! Curse that blood! Curse
that false Jesus!" The "remote control" was pouring the words into his
brain, and he was echoing them with his lips. "Destroy it! Break those
arms!" The instructions tumbled pell-mell.

He stretched out his hands, gripped one arm of the tree, and began
to pull while he shouted. "Curses on you! Curses on you! I am free of
you! Lord of Light! Save me! Help!" The arm of the tree broke. He
seized the other arm with both hands and started pulling and shouting.
It gave without warning, and its release sent him flying backward,
tumbling down the slope toward the river, his world now a careening
tunnel of lights and blows and bumps, until he fell against a tree trunk
and lost consciousness.

The search party found him there a few hours later, just before
sundown. He was semiconscious and weak, his two hands still holding
a broken tree branch. They lifted him to a sitting position, his back
resting against the tree that had broken his fall. He was facing the
ridge. The sun was setting, but its last red-gold rays flowed thinly
around the withered tree, its cross-arms now splintered stubs, its trunk
stained with dark splotches.

Jonathan did not notice it for a while until his vision focused.
Gradually he became aware of tall figures around him, of voices
speaking, of hands that were putting a flask of whisky to his lips, and of
other hands tending to his bruises. He heard the sounds of branches
being cut with axes. But his gaze fell on the tree. Alarm bells sounded
in him. He began to struggle to his feet, his eyes fixed on that tree.

The red light of the sun was rapidly fading to blue-black twilight,
and the tree was dissolving into the ridge. One of the men in the
search party saw Jonathan struggling to rise and noticed the fixity of
his stare at the tree.

"Don't worry, Father," he said, "it's only a tree. A dead tree. It's all
right, I tell you. Take it easy, will you, Father! It's only a tree, Father."
He exerted pressure on Jonathan and prevented him from standing up.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I33

Jonathan slumped back wearily and muttered: "Only a tree. Only a
tree." Then he blacked out. They placed him on the makeshift
stretcher they had fashioned and set off for the campsite.

The end was not far off for Jonathan; but he did not seem to realize
it. After a few days' rest at the base camp, the party journeyed to
Manchester, New Hampshire. Jonathan was taken to his mother's
house.

He was extremely weak, suffered bouts of dizziness, had pains all
over his body. He found it difficult to sleep at night and could not
concentrate on reading or painting. The family doctor prescribed a
two-month rest.

Jonathan spent the first few weeks in bed under sedation. He was
tended by his mother and a day nurse. Gradually his strength returned.
By October's end he was up and around the house. In November he
was strong enough to walk around the garden, and he started to read
and paint again.

His mother had been in touch with Father David at the seminary
through her pastor. And the moment Jonathan (she also had to adopt
his new name) was at all well, she telephoned David. He arrived one
afternoon to see Jonathan.

The meeting was a disturbing one for David, but for Jonathan it
seemed to be an occasion of new strength, an eerie triumph bathed
him even in his misery. He addressed David as "my son," using a
paternalistic tone of voice that affected David in an unexpected way.
It was the first time in all his years as an adult that David had felt real
fear.

With this atmosphere as a brooding backdrop to their conversation,
David and Jonathan chatted about Canada. The common report
brought back by his companions had been that either Jonathan had
been attacked by a wild animal, or that for some other reason he had
panicked, taken to his heels, and knocked himself unconscious while
running. After a few minutes with Jonathan, David was certain that
something much more significant than a mere accident had happened,
but Jonathan would not open up to him.

After a while, Jonathan succeeded in shifting David's queries away
from Canada and the recent trip. He began talking instead about his
new apostolate and of his plans for a New York "mission." Then
surprisingly, and in ways that seemed elusive to him, the conversation
began returning to David himself. And once again David found that a

134 THE cases

whole part of his being was in total accord with all that Jonathan said.
And again, in some other part of him, he felt a deep resistance.

Finally Jonathan rounded on him at one moment: "Father David,
my son, eventually you too will find the light, and come out into the
open and preach the New Time and the New Being."

David's conflict welled up full inside him, a welcoming chord for
Jonathan's portentous words, and a hard, gripping fright. Supposing he
could not stop himself going all the way into exactly what Jonathan
was doing — whatever that was. What then?

David recalls vividly the slow and deep nausea that built up inside
him as he sat in that sick room surrounded by a quiet countryside. It
was disgust riven with fear. He had had a similar but not quite
identical experience once before, descending into a mass grave in
Africa, at the tomb of an ancient tribal chieftain. Over the piles of
bones of people sacrificed to ensure a chieftain's safe passage to
eternal happiness, he had felt the touch of independent and sovereign
evil, almost heard its voice in the fetid darkness saying silkily to him:
"Come into my domain, David! You belong here!" And it kept coming
into his mind that those long-buried men had never known anything
about Jesus or Christianity. Some obscure conclusions had started to
run around his head as he had stood in the tomb. But his nausea had
not permitted him to examine them clearly.

Now, trying to fathom the mystery, he looked at Jonathan. Who was
possessed? Was either of them possessed? Was it all imagination?
Jonathan, in spite of his illness, seemed erect, tall, the color back in his
cheeks, his blue eyes gleaming, his long hair falling gracefully over his
shoulders. All his strength and natural comeliness seemed restored.
Facing him, David suddenly felt weak and puny and somehow dirty. A
phrase of Jonathan's sent his courage reeling further.

"Not for nothing, my son, have I been named Jonathan. You are
David. And in the Bible they were bound together in the divine
work."

David turned away helplessly, fighting the floods of weakness and
fear that engulfed him. He was seeking composure, but Jonathan's
voice pursued, triumphant, resounding.

"What happens to me, happens to you, my son. Don't you see? It is
all foreordained. We have entered the Kingdom of the New Time and
the New Being."

David felt at the end of his resistance. The nausea was increasing.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I35

He was enmeshed in a trap he had not suspected. He went to the door,
opened it, and spoke over his shoulder in a weak voice:

"Jonathan. Let's agree on one thing. If you need help, I shall help. Is
it a deal?" When there was no answer, he turned slowly around.
"Jonathan! We have an appointment the day you — "

He broke off. Jonathan was standing in the middle of the room, his
eyes closed, his body swaying back and forth as if buffeted by a strong
wind.

"Jonathan! Jonathan! Are you all right?"

"Father David," the voice was almost a whisper and full of pain.
"Father David, help me . . . not now . . . impossible now . . .
too far . . . but at the moment . . . it's a deal . . . if . . ."

The rest was lost in a mumbling confusion. Jonathan turned away
and then slumped down into an armchair. David noticed Jonathan's
right index finger was held in his left hand.

The door opened. Jonathan's mother entered quietly, unhurriedly.
Her face was a mask. "Don't worry, Father David," she murmured.
"He will sleep now. And in the aftertime you can get back to him. Go
and rest. You need it. You all need rest."

He chatted for a few minutes with her, then left. She would keep
him posted on Jonathan's movements.

In the middle of December Jonathan left home again and went back
to New York. For the next four months David followed Jonathan's
activities. He was always available but never conspicuous, visiting
New York regularly, keeping informed of Jonathan's whereabouts and
activities. For the moment he could not intervene. That moment
would come, he knew.

He now was convinced that Jonathan had ceded full possession of
himself to some evil spirit. He was half-convinced that he himself was
affected by all this, but he did not understand exactly how. Not until
the disastrous marriage ceremony by the sea was he to have the
opportunity of helping Jonathan and of finding out exactly what had
happened to himself.

In mid-February, David heard quite by accident of the marriage
ceremony Jonathan was going to perform at Dutchman's Point. The
bride's father, a prominent broker, was an old acquaintance of David.
He immediately telephoned the father and arranged to have lunch
with him at his home in Manchester. David was received at first with

I36 THE CASES

great warmth as an old friend. But the conversation turned sour, as the
reason for his visit became clear: David wanted the bride's father
either to postpone the marriage or to engage another clergyman.

Father Jonathan was a good priest, sniffed Hilda's father. Then,
unpleasantly, he went on to grumble about the clergy in general,
saying that at least Jonathan got the younger generation to say their
prayers and to believe in God and take care of the environment —
something "men of the cloth" did not ordinarily do. David argued,
hinting at his basic fears and suspicions about Jonathan. But it was of
no avail. The world was changing, he was told. What was all this
sinister talk of evil and of the Devil? Father David did not believe, or
did he, in all that nonsense anymore? David's only answer was an
expression of his deep apprehension for Jonathan and for his friend's
daughter.

Then, if he was so afraid, the broker concluded as he rose from the
table, why didn't Father David come himself? He was thereby invited.
He would see, the broker added, his daughter would be all right. For
once Hilda was going to be gloriously happy. She wanted things this
way. She was to be married only once.

'Til be there," answered David quietly. "Don't worry. But you will
have to answer for the result."

The broker stopped and looked at David, thought for a few seconds,
then his face clouded over with anger. His words cut into David
deeply. "Father David, I am a simple man as far as religion and
religious matters go. Whatever happens in that area is the fault of all
you clergy. You know" — he broke off, scrutinizing David's face and
figure — "sometimes I have a feeling that yon people are the really lost
ones. We lay people have some sort of protection. We were never in
charge of religion, y'know." They parted.

MISTER NATCH AND THE SALEM CHORUS

The exorcism of Father Jonathan began in the first week of April and
ended only in the second week of May. Totally unforeseen by David,
the exorcism of Jonathan proved to be relatively easy. It was David
himself who was in jeopardy. His sanity, his religious belief, and his
bodily life were in maximum danger. But thanks to David's sufferings,
we can form a better idea of the mechanics of possession — at least of

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 137

one type of possession: how it starts, how it progresses, and where, in
the final analysis, the free choice of the possessed comes into play.

While the exorcism of Jonathan was recorded on tape, for the
details of David's four- week marathon struggle with himself we have
to rely on the diary he kept so punctiliously during that time, together
with what he told others of his experience, and my own conversations
with him.

When David and Jonathan left the marriage party on Massepiq
beach, David drove directly to the seminary, where Jonathan and he
stayed until the beginning of the exorcism.

As they drove, Jonathan had one persistent question for David:
what was the importance of starting before the sun was high in the
sky?

David was frank: he did not know exactly; he might never know;
but, with only his instincts to go on, David was certain that the light of
the noonday sun had somehow become for Jonathan a vehicle for an
evil influence. "For you, Jonathan, it has become contaminated,"
David said tersely.

Jonathan wept at the implication of David's words. The light and
warmth of the sun itself, the most beautiful things in Jonathan's world,
had become evil for him. Still, following David's instructions, Jonathan
kept the blinds drawn in his room at the seminary. He went outside to
take fresh air only in the evening and at night. He avoided the high
noonday sun.

The pre-exorcism preparations to which Father David had become
accustomed in his work as an exorcist in the diocese were completed
by the end of March. Some of these steps — medical checkup,
examination by psychologists, family background — had been taken
during Jonathan's spectacular seizure the previous autumn. With
cursory additions, the preparations were completed. It remained to
choose a place, fix a day, and appoint assistants.

David had an inner conviction that there would be little physical
violence but much mental stress and a deep strain on his own spirit.
He therefore asked a young psychiatrist friend and a middle-aged
medical doctor to be his assistants. He had the services of his young
priest assistant, Father Thomas, who was to succeed him in June as
diocesan exorcist.

The choice of the place of exorcism presented a problem. David

I38 THE CASES

favored the seminary oratory or a room in a remote wing of the
seminary. Jonathan pleaded for the exorcism to take place in his
mother's house, where he had been born and reared. All his
associations, his beginnings, and his high hopes dwelt in that house
that his father had designed and built himself. Besides, it stood in its
own plot of land and enjoyed a privacy unavailable at the seminary.

The bishop, ever calm, decided for them. "Whatever must come
out, had better come out privately and discreetly. 1 don't want half my
young seminarians getting nervous and running off half-cocked," he
said to David. He added something which David had not expected
from this worldly man whose chief claim to fame was his financial
wizardry: "No superstition, mind you, Father David" — this with an
arching of the eyebrows — "but his father built the house and raised his
family there. He also has an interest in the whole matter. His ties are
to it, surely."

David reflected on the bishop's last remark; it bore out what he had
surmised in other possession cases: there was an intimate connection
between definite locales and the exorcism of evil spirits.

They all agreed that Jonathan should remain at the seminary under
surveillance by David and his young assistant priest until the eve of
April 1, the day chosen for the exorcism. As that day approached,
Jonathan became more and more listless, ate little, and relied more
heavily on sleeping pills in order to secure a good night's rest.

At 10:00 p.m. on March 31, David drove him to his mother's house.
They were joined there that night by the assistants — a precaution
David took, again by instinct. At 4:00 a.m. the following morning,
awakened by some noise, they found Jonathan fully dressed and
searching in the drawers of the kitchen closet. Whether he was looking
for a knife to use on himself or others, or whether — as he said — he was
preparing some food, David could never be sure. Anyway, since all
were awake, David asked Jonathan's mother to make some breakfast.
By 6:00 a.m. they were ready to begin.

The arrangements were simple. The room had been cleared of
furniture. Its terrazzo floor was bare of any carpet or rug. The window
shutters were closed. Jonathan preferred to take a kneeling position,
face sunk in his hands, at the small table on which David had placed
his crucifix, the holy-water flask, the two candles, and the ritual book.
The tape recorder was placed by the window. David wore cassock,
surplice, and stole. He made no solemn entry. Standing at the opposite
side of the table to Jonathan, his assistants gathered around them both,

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 139

he got down right away to the business in hand. He recited the
opening prayer, put down his book, looked straight at Jonathan, and
spoke.

"Jonathan, before we go any further, I want to ask thai you, in front
of these witnesses, state quite clearly that you are here of your own
accord, and that you wish me in the name of Jesus and with the
authority of his Church to exorcise whatever evil spirits may possess
you or hold any part of you, body and soul, in captivity. Answer me."
David looked at Jonathan's bowed head. He could not see his face,
only that golden hair, little strips of his forehead between the long,
artistic fingers, and Jonathan's graceful hands cupping his face.

"Jonathan, please answer us," he said after a silence. David held his
breath in growing suspense.

"I consent to be here" — Jonathan's voice was deep and melodious —
"wishing that whatever evil or error is present be exorcised." David
breathed easily again. But his uneasiness returned almost immediately,
as Jonathan added: "Evil is subtle. Injustice is ancient. All wrongs
must be righted. This is true Exorcism,"

"We are talking, Jonathan, precisely and only of Satan, the Prince of
Darkness, the Angel of Light," David hastened to say with severity.
He noticed that Jonathan stirred a little, as if listening intently. "We
are proposing to discover that presence and to expel it by the power of
Jesus. Do you consent?"

"I consent."

A pause. Then when David was about to put his next question,
Jonathan started again. "Poor Jesus! Poor, poor Jesus! Served so badly.
Described so poorly. Disfigured so brashly. Poor Jesus! Poor, poor
Jesus!"

David stopped abruptly. Jonathan's voice was still bell-like and
silvery. David decided to take another tack.

"Now, Jonathan, by the power invested in me by the Church of
Jesus, and in the name of Jesus, I wish to put you a second question.
Have you knowingly, consciously, within your living memory, ever
conceded anything to, or agreed, or even trifled with the Evil One?"

Jonathan's voice came back, musical and calm. "To do that to Jesus
would be a betrayal of myself, of my flock, of Jesus' goodness, of the
world, of life itself, of our eternal peace ..."

"Jonathan, I want an answer, an unequivocal answer to my
question. This is important."

140 THE CASES

"On the contrary, Jesus has come to me, and I have become his
priest. Praise Jesus! Praise the Lord of our world!"

David had to be satisfied with this answer, so he went on to the next
stage.

"Then, Jonathan, we will repeat, first, the Credo, and then your
baptismal vows." David hoped in this way to avoid the necessity of
going through the formal ritual of Exorcism. After all, he reasoned, if
Jonathan could answer thus far satisfactorily, then the possession
might just be a partial thing.

David took up the first phrases of the Credo. "I believe in God, the
Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth." There he paused,
waiting for Jonathan. But Jonathan had seemingly started before he
had ended the phrases, and all that David could hear were the words
"the Earth." He started the next phrase, "And in Jesus Christ," but
broke off because Jonathan was still talking on.

"Two or three billion years ago, the Earth. Each one of us 50 trillion
cells. 150 million in Caesar's day. 3,600 million in our day. 200 million
tons of men, women, and children. Two trillion tons of animal
life ..."

"Jonathan, let's get on with it . . ."

"All so that Jesus can emerge. Oh, beautiful Omega! Praise Jesus!
Praise the Lord of this world with which we are all, all 200 million tons
of us, are one."

David stopped and looked hard at Jonathan. He still had his face
sunk in his hands and was still talking.

"Oh, what they've done to it. Jews and Christians. These Judeo-
Christians." Jonathan's voice now sank to a whisper of disgust. "The
pontiff of creation — that's what they made every man and woman."
Jonathan's shoulders shook; he was sobbing.

Again as before, David felt a strangely welcoming agreement in
himself for each statement of Jonathan's. Some hidden part of him he
had not known was saying again with insistence, "Yes! Yes!"

Jonathan's voice took on a speed and haste of assertion. "And what
started as a pioneering weed, a trial species with toads and cock
robins, zooming upward to the Jesus Point, suddenly turned and made
the planet its playground, the stage of its jig-acting, its domain." The
voice sank again to a whispered prayer. "Poor Jesus! Poor world!
Praise the Lord of the World for Light! Poor Jesus!"

The surge of agreement in David started to sour. What was it Father
G. had said? David's memory started to spin and turn. Panic seized

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I4I

him. He rummaged desperately through his recollections like a man
plowing through a pile of old papers in search of a sorely needed
document. He searched back to the beginning, back to the first
instructions bustly Father G. had ever given him. What was it?

Jonathan's voice broke in on him.

"Father David, you are not with me. Please be with me!" It was
insistent. David glanced again at the graceful hands covering the face
and intertwined with the golden hair. Jonathan looked like an angel of
God clad in light, doing penance on his knees for the sins of men.
David wanted to say to him: "Yes! Jonathan, don't fear! I am with you!
Yes!" The words rose to his lips like a drink offered. But a quick wave
of uneasiness hit him again; and again that question came back like a
boomerang: What did Father G. warn him against? What had he said?
What was it? Jonathan's voice broke in again.

"Father G. is past and gone." David was shocked by Jonathan's
reading of his own inmost thoughts. "Back to the womb of all of us.
Let the dead bury the dead, Father David. You and I. We live. Let us
walk in the light, while we have it."

Jonathan talked on now, intermingling Scripture with his words.
David turned away as if warding ofT some influence coming at him
from Jonathan; and his mind reeled as he tried to regain his lost
ground. He looked up at the ceiling. He felt at bay: there was only
Jonathan and himself, and between them a strange ether, an invisible
corridor of communication. And, all the while, his memory was still
groping and working overtime, looking for a firm hold for his mind and
will. Ah! At last! That's what Father G. had said: "The Angel of
Light." TJiat's what he wanted to remember. "The Angel of Light."
And Father G. had warned him, too: "Your great danger, David, is
that you think too much. Too much of the old cerebellum in you.
Listen to your heart. The Lord speaks to your heart."

A strong feeling of relief passed over David. A space was being
opened up inside him — free, untrammeled, easy, roomy, fresh, private
— untouched by that coiling dark pathway of communication between
him and Jonathan.

Then a sharp word — his own name pronounced like the snapping of
a horsewhip — hit his ears.

"David! David!" It was Jonathan. This time the voice had an
admonitory note, the tone used by a master or a superior. The roles
were curiously reversed.

David heard his young assistant priest whispering in his ear: "David,

142 THE CASES

he's shaking. Do you think he's all right? The doctor is afraid . . ."
David motioned to him, and looked at Jonathan again closely.
Jonathan's face was still hidden in his hands, but he seemed to David
and the assistants to be racked with sobs and sorrow.

David decided to try another approach. He had to get a toehold.
Somehow he had to get Jonathan to resist the evil spirit possessing
him; he had to force that spirit out into the open. And he had to keep
control of himself in order to do that.

In retrospect, given David's nature, his action was almost inevitable.
And given the reality of his situation as distinct from that of Jonathan,
what followed was both inevitable and necessary.

He drew near Jonathan. Commiseration and compassion were
uppermost in his mind. He put a hand lightly on Jonathan's shoulder
and spoke.

"Jonathan, my friend. Don't give in to sorrow. I will never leave off
or abandon my efforts. I will not desert you now until ..."

"I know you won't . . ." Jonathan's voice seemed to be forced out
between the violent contraction of his chest and throat. "I know you
won't because'' — Jonathan paused and drew a deep breath — 'mt/
brother, you can't. You can't." It was a dreadful rasp, a curious hiss
that reached like a hand inside David's mind. David started to
withdraw his hand; and as he did, he felt strange impulses in his mind:
a fierce persuasion beat at him that he and Jonathan were the only
sane people in that room. The others, his young colleague, the doctor,
the psychiatrist, were mannequins, plastic models of reality, pica-
resque heroes in a cosmic joke. Only Jonathan and himself. Only
Jonathan and David.

"You've got it, David!" whispered Jonathan. A rasp. A hiss.

Who was in control?

"Got what?" David hardly had the words out of his mouth when he
felt some understanding beyond words, some common current of
thought, as if David and Jonathan were sharing a common brain or
some higher intuitive faculty that dispensed with the need for word
of mouth. "Got what?" David said it over and over again. It was a sort
of cry, a protest against deception. For in those moments it all became
clear to him. He knew for the first time: he himself was being slowly
pervaded by the same spirit of evil which held Jonathan; and he
understood Jonathan knew that also.

Jonathan lifted his face suddenly and looked at David. His right
hand, with the crooked index finger, came down tightly on David's

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I43

hand as it rested on his own shoulder. David was like a man who saw a
ghost: suddenly pale, shrunken, staring eyes, tight-lipped, short of
breath, sweating profusely. For the face he saw on Jonathan was
wreathed and twisted, not by sorrow or tears of pain, but in smiles and
merriment. He had not been racked with sobs but with suppressed
laughter. And that laughter now broke from his lips with a gust of
relief. He shouted into David's face.

"You're the same as me, David! Father David!" David's young
assistant, Thomas, drew near to David. The doctor and the psychiatrist
fell back, overcome by surprise, looking incredulously from David to
Jonathan and back to David. David shrugged off the offer of help from
Father Thomas.

"You have adopted the Lord of Light, like I have, you old fool!"
shrieked Jonathan between his cackling laughter. He loosened his grip
on David's hand and rose to his feet. "Physician, cure yourself!"

Jonathan roared in amusement. His laughter filled the little room; he
doubled over in merriment, slapping his knee, tears running down his
face. "Ha-ha! David, you're a joke. You're a soul-fellow of mine. You
don't believe one goddamn lousy thing of that childish hocus-pocus."
Each word hit David like a physical blow. "Hoc est corpus meum!
You're as liberated as I am, man. You belong to the New Being and the
New Time."

Suddenly Jonathan quieted down. "And you were trying to exorcise
me?" The contempt that replaced the laughter was enormous. He
leaned forward, thrusting his face close to David's. In a slow,
deliberate tone, emphasizing every word: "Get out of here, you puny
weakling! Get out of here with these scarecrows you brought with you.
Go bind up your wounds. Go find if your sugary Jesus will cure you.
G-e-t o-u-t!" The last two words were two slowly delivered, heavily
loaded syllables of contempt and dismissal.

David was now like a man trying to stand up after a heavy physical
blow. "Come, Father David," the younger priest said quietly but
urgently, as he took in the look of superiority and command in
Jonathan's face. "Let's go, David," said the doctor.

David turned for an instant and looked at Jonathan. The others saw
no fear on David's face, only puzzlement and pain. Their look
followed David's. There stood Jonathan watching their retreat. His
whole appearance had changed. His head was uplifted. He was
standing tall and erect. His, golden hair fell around his shoulders like a
halo catching the winking light of the candles. His blue eyes were

144 THE cases

shining with hazy light. His right hand was raised in such a way that
his stiffened index finger was laid across his throat. His left hand hung
by his side.

"Go in darkness, you fool!" Jonathan screamed in a high falsetto.
His right hand descended in a vicious gesture and swept the
candlesticks off the table onto the floor. The candles went out and the
room was in semidarkness. The young priest had the door open. All
four men moved out quickly. "In darkness! Fools!" Jonathan's voice
pursued them. As they emerged, they suddenly realized that the
temperature of the day was already hot; inside, in the room, they had
been cold.

David literally stumbled into the lighted hallway and leaned against
the wall. Beside the hatrack, Jonathan's mother was sitting in a
straight-backed ornamental chair. Her hands held a rosary on her lap.
Her head, eyes closed, was bowed. After a few moments, she raised
her head and, without looking around at David, she spoke in a quiet
voice full of resigned sorrow.

"He's right. My son. The devil's slave. He is right, Father David.
You need cleansing. God help you." Then, as if she sensed some
apprehension in David and the others for her sanity or her faith, she
added: "I am his mother. No harm can come to me." It was an
instinctual thing she said, but David was certain she was correct.

David stumbled past her. Nobody looked at her. His companions
eased David into a car and drove him to the seminary. Once in his
room, he sat wearily with the young priest for about half an hour.

"What are we going to do, Father David?" Thomas finally asked.
David made no reply. He was now wholly occupied with himself and
with the black reality he had discovered inside himself. He looked at
the young priest and felt strangely out of place. What had he in
common with that fresh face, the black cassock, the white round
collar, and — above all — that look in the young priest's eyes? What was
that look, anyway? He screwed up his eyes staring at Thomas. What
was that look? Had he ever had it himself? Was it all a joke? A mere
charade or piece of imposed childishness? Young priests must believe
— like young children. Then they grow up — as children do. And then
they stop having that look. Stop "believing"?

"You are surrounded by quotation marks, Thomas," he said stupidly
to the younger priest. Then he lapsed into silence still staring at his
colleague. What in the hell was believing anyway? That inane look!
What was that look! As if all was sugar and spice and goo and kindness

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I45

and pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die and infantile trust. Why was that
look so open and wide-eyed?

"Stop looking like a fool!" David shot the words at Thomas. Then he
realized what he had done. "Sorry, Thomas," he mumbled lamely,
seeing the young face pale. David began to cry in silence.

"Father David," Thomas drew in a breath. "I have no experience.
But you need a rest. Let me phone your family." David nodded
helplessly.

In the early afternoon David was driven up to Coos County, back to
his home on the farm. His parents were delighted to see him. They
now lived alone except for one sleep-in help and a gardener who
stayed at the farm.

That night David went to bed in the room he had occupied during
his childhood and youth. But some time after midnight he woke up
covered with perspiration and shaking like a leaf. He did not know
why, but a deep sense of foreboding filled his mind. He got up, went
down to the kitchen, and heated some milk. As he returned to his
room, he stopped at the door of Old Edward's room. He stood there
for a moment, sipping the milk and thinking in a vague, undirected
way. As he describes it now, his mind was still clearing, like a jumbled
TV picture slowly coming into focus. Then, with nothing particular in
mind, but only by some blind impulse, he opened the door of the
room, reached for the light switch, and stepped inside.

The room was much the same as it had been the evening of
Edward's death, except for one change: a large photograph of Edward,
taken a few months before he had passed away, hung over the
mantelpiece. It looked down at David. He sat for about an hour in that
room. Then, under the same blind impulse, still unhurriedly, he went
to his own room, transferred his bedclothes and personal effects to
Edward's room, and then went to sleep there.

David stayed almost four weeks on the farm. In the beginning, he
went out every day for long walks and to do some manual work on the
farm. Sometimes he passed by the copse at the west end of the house,
but never entered it. He would stand a while ruminating and then go
on his way. He looked up some old friends, and spent a good part of
the evenings with his parents.

Toward the end of the first week, this loose and varied schedule
changed. He began to spend most of the day and night in his room,
coming out for his meals, rarely going outside the house. Then about
the third week, he did not emerge at all except to use the bathroom.

I46 THE CASES

He did not open the shutters in his room. He ate sparingly, and toward
the end lived on milk and biscuits and some dried fruit which his
mother left on a tray outside the door of his room.

From the beginning of his stay he had warned his parents not to be
alarmed by his living habits. On his first day there, he had gone to see
Father Joseph, the local priest, whom he had taught in the seminary.
During the last ten days of David's stay at the farm, that priest was the
only human being who visited and spoke with David.

David kept a minutely detailed diary during those four weeks; and,
except for certain moments when he lost control of himself (of those
moments he has no clear recollection), there is a more or less
continuous chronology of events — the inner experience David went
through and the external phenomena that marked this crucial period.

During all this time, down in Manchester, Jonathan lived at home
with his mother.

Comparison of how David and Jonathan spent specific days and
hours during those weeks has been difficult to achieve, but there is
clear indication that certain states through which David passed
coincided — sometimes to the hour — with strange moments and behav-
ior in Jonathan's life. Our chief intent, however, is to trace David's
experience, for, in the technical language of theology, Father David
M. was deprived of all conscious belief. His religious faith was tested
in an assault which nearly succeeded in robbing him of it all. Mentally
and emotionally, he found himself in the state of one without any
religious belief whatever. To this extent, David, who still felt that his
vocation as priest was valid, had handed over his mind and emotions to
some form of possession.

There would have been no struggle, much less any agony, if David's
will had not remained stubbornly attached to his religious beliefs. Inch
by inch, figuratively speaking, he had to fight for survival of his faith
against a spirit to which he himself had granted entry and which now
made a bid to take him over completely. Consciously he had been
admitting ideas and persuasions for a long time. He had not realized
until now that all such motivating ideas and persuasions, for all their
guise of "objectivity," had a moral dimension and a relation to
spirit — good and evil. He had failed all along to realize that nothing is
morally neutral. With these ideas, persuasions, and deficiencies as a
most suitable vehicle, there had entered him some spirit, alien to him,
but now claiming full control over him.

During those four weeks on the Coos farm, David's entire life as a

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I47

believer flashed by him continually and ever more intensely like
photographs being flipped with the thumb — childhood, schooldays,
seminary training, ordination, doctoral studies, anthropology trips,
lectures, what he had written in articles and books, the conversations
he had held, constantly changing panels. When he reached the end,
they began all over again.

Cameos. Little scenes. Faces long forgotten. Words and sentences
echoing back in half-complete fashion. Vivid memories. Each one with
an individual conclusion. The day he told Sister Antonio in the
convent school that Jesus could not possibly fit into the communion
wafer. David was eight years old. Sister had patted his head: "David,
be a good boy. We know what is right." They had given him no choice
and no answer. No choice. No choice, rang the silent echo.

His interview with the bishop for acceptance into the seminary: "If
you become a priest, you are called to a perfection of spirit not
granted to the majority of Christians." Spirit is not elitist. Not elitist.
Not elitist. Not elitist, went the echo.

The echoes rang through the hall of years in David's brain, as the
"photographs" continued to flash before him.

He remembered the moment he became convinced that there were
no reliable records about Jesus written during Jesus' own lifetime. In
the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of Paul,
there was only what men and women believed and thought they knew
30, 40, 60 years after Jesus' death. Even if they believed they knew,
how could David be sure that they knew? He was thinking and
believing only what they thought and believed. "I have no records. It
sounds like delusion." Delusion. Delusion. Delusion. The word was a
hammer blow in David's whorl of memories.

Then another flash of memory, another change, another bit of evil.
Eleven years before, David had gone on a tour through the places
where Jesus had lived and died. Immediately afterward, he had visited
Rome and spent long days viewing its monuments, basilicas, and
treasures. He followed the ceremonies in St. Peter's Basilica. As he
started home for America, one question dominated everything for him:
What possible relationship could there be between Jesus' obscure life
on that stark, poverty-stricken, barren land, and the panoply and glory
of papal Rome? Perhaps he understood only now, but he had come to
a covert conclusion on that home journey: there was no real
relationship. Now his memory kept on repeating with little bursts of
pain: no relationship, no relationship, no relationship.

I48 THE CASES

Four years before, he had opened up an ancient tomb in northeast-
ern Turkey. Inside, he and the other archeologists had found a buried
chieftain surrounded by the bones of men and animals slaughtered for
his funeral. The bones, the weapons, the utensils, the dust, and the
pathos of it all had gripped him. These had been men like himself.
They had had no knowledge of Jesus. How could they be judged for
not knowing anything about Jesus and Christianity? Surely what David
had thought of Jesus was too small a concept? Surely the truth was
greater than any dogma? Than any concept of Jesus as man or as God,
or any form that Jesus took? It had to be so. Otherwise, there was no
sense in anything. Greater than Jesus. Greater than Jesus. Greater than
Jesus. Another jarring echo ringing in his memory.

There gradually emerged a fatal thread that stitched together all the
echoing resentments, all the complaints of reason, all the arrogance of
logic stripped to its own marrow. And the fabric of faith slipped away
unnoticed as this new cloth draped his mind and soul. The thread was
David's acceptance of Teilhard de Chardin's theories. Accepting
them, he could no longer tolerate the break between the material
nature of the world, on the one hand, and Jesus as savior, on the other
hand. Materiality and divinity were one; the material world together
with man's consciousness and will, both emerging from sheer material-
ity as automatically as a hen from an egg; and Jesus' divinity emerging
from his human being as naturally as an oak tree from an acorn, as
inevitably as water flowing downward.

Jesus — so suddenly integral to the universe, so intimate with its
being, so totally physical — was different from what religious dogma
had said he was, greater than Christian belief had ever before
understood. Jesus, each man, each woman, all were brothers to the
boulders, sisters of the stars, "co-beings" with all animals and plants.
All understanding became easy. It all came down to the atom; and it
all came up from the atom as well. Everything fell into place.

So much for Teilhard, David thought bitterly.

With an anguish he could not assuage, David realized the conse-
quences of all this only now in the lonely struggle and painful vigil for
his soul. Any real reverence and awe had evaporated from his religious
mentality. For the world around him he had only a sense of joyous
kinship — mingled with a certain foreboding. For Jesus, only a
satisfying feeling of triumph, just as for any ancient and beloved hero.
For the Mass, an indulgent feeling akin to what he experienced when
observing commemorative services on any July Fourth. The Crucifix-

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 149

ion and the death of Jesus were glorious events in the past, ancient
demonstrations of heroic love, not an ever-present source of personal
forgiveness and not an unshakable hope for any future.

Isolated with his thoughts and memories, David's question for
himself was not where or how things had gone wrong, but how to
retrieve his strength in faith. As the years passed continually by his
view like so many panels from right to left, David seemed to be close
up to them, scrutinizing each detail.

As the days passed, those panels in the panorama moved faster and
faster, on and on, repeating over and over. He could still read the
details. Each phrase sounded and receded as its corresponding panel
came and went. No choice. Not elitist. Delusion. No relationship.
Greater than Jesus. Brothers to the boulders.

Sometime after midnight at the beginning of the third week at the
Coos farm, David seemed suddenly to be drawing away from his
close-up scrutiny of the changing panels, or they were withdrawing
from him, receding into some background darkness he had not noticed
before. He realized he had not been looking at panels passing
horizontally in front of him from right to left. He had been close to a
revolving sphere that was now drawing away from him. Distancing
itself from him and still revolving, it depicted all the phases of his life
continuously and without interruption around the smooth convex
surface of that brightly lit ball.

From its dreamy depths came the sounds of all his yesteryears —
words, voices, languages, music, crying, laughing. The sphere had a
mesmeric quality of a carousel giving off a creamy light. David seemed
to be looking at himself out there.

Yet a tiny voice kept whispering within him: Why me? Why am I
attacked? Why me? Where is Jesus? What is Jesus? And all around
that revolving sphere lay the unfathomable velvet of a night he had
never known.

Staring at the sphere, he knew that in some mysterious way he was
staring at the self he had become. Of the room around him, the feel of
the chair in which he sat, the nib of his clothes against his skin, of such
things finally he was not even indirectly conscious.

Now, without either pause or abruptness, the light from that
revolving sphere started to grow dim. More and more of the blackness
around it started to patch its panels with shadows, crow's-feet of
obscurity, little running lines of invisibility. The self he had been and
known was being volatilized into blackness. David felt panic, but

150 THE CASES

seemed to be incapable of doing anything about what was happening
to him.

Then he had the feeling that he was no longer looking out or up or
at anything, but that he now was out there hanging in that blackness.
Feeding his helplessness and panic was the conviction that he was the
cause of this black void and that he needed it. Otherwise, it seemed to
him, he would drop into nothingness.

Then finally, all he had ever been or known of himself had
disappeared. The self to which he was now reduced hung by an
invisible thread — but only as long as he could maintain that blackness.
David's panic was marinated in a tide of sullenness rising in him,
sullenness at being deprived of light, of salvation, of grace, of beauty,
of motives for holiness, of knowledge about physical symmetry, and all
perception of God's eternity. His reaction to this sullenness: Why me?

He was waiting, expecting, almost listening. Hours. Days. His
waiting became so intense, so oppressive that he gradually realized he
was not waiting of his own volition. The waiting was being evoked
from him by someone or something outside him. Yet each time he tried
to figure out or imagine who or what was evoking the waiting, his very
effort at imagining clouded everything over. The only thing he could
do was wait, be made to wait, to expect.

And there set in on him a sadness he could not dispel. He no longer
felt any confidence in himself or in anything he knew. For all seemed
to be reduced to a situation without circumstances, a pattern without
a background, a framework sodden with emptiness through which
rushed gusts of an alien influence he could neither repel nor control.
He was helpless. And eventually he would fall asleep, awakening only
with the light of day streaming in through the bay window.

In the morning he would know it was all real: he was isolated from
all he had ever made his own and from all he had ever been. And he
had to wait. But, obscurely and earnestly, he realized that whatever it
was he awaited, could come to him only under these conditions.

A conversation David had with Father Joseph at the end of the third
week reveals the crux of David's struggle and his state of mind toward
the last phase of his four-week test. It was Father Joseph's third visit.
Each time, he had questioned David about the experience he was
undergoing, and each time he himself had left the house overwhelmed
by a sorrow and inner pain which he found intolerable. And David had
warned him: "Don't delve very deeply, Father. You can only get hurt.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 151

And come to see me in the mornings. In the afternoon I doze a little.
Evenings and nights are too much for anybody but me."

This time, stepping into David's room from the sunlit corridor
outside, Father Joseph took a moment to get used to the sernidarkness.
Little lines of sunlight ran around the edges of the shutters. In the far
corner beside the fireplace, he saw David sitting at a small table,
hunched over a page of writing. A single candle stood on the table; it
was all the light David allowed himself,

David stood up and pointed Joseph to an armchair when the priest
entered. "Have a seat, Father." Their eyes did not meet while he
spoke.

David had not shaved for a couple of days. He was gaunt and
hollow-cheeked. There was very little color in his face. But it was the
immobility of his features that first struck his visitor. His cheeks,
forehead, nose, chin, and neck seemed to be frozen into motionless-
ness, as if too much inner determination and too much constant
resistance had resulted in a total hardening of his appearance, a setting
of his face into an expressionless shape.

His eyes particularly held Father Joseph. They seemed to have
grown larger, the lids, heavier, the whites, whiter, the pupils, darker
than they had been. Obviously David had been crying a good deal. But
at this moment his eyes were clear, steady in gaze, remote in look.

There was no hint of a smile or of any pleasant emotion, but neither
was there any unpleasantness. Nor fear. Nor pain. Nor were David's
eyes blank. They had an expression; but that expression was totally
unknown to Joseph. He had never seen it before in anybody's eyes.
And he was at a loss to explain it or describe it. He was looking at the
eyes of someone who had seen things of which he could have no
inkling.

He knew better than to indulge in pleasantries, even to ask David
how he was. They both sat there in silence, both understanding what
was in the other's mind.

From outside, some isolated sounds penetrated faintly into the
room, a truck passing on the road, the twittering of some birds, a dog
barking on a distant farm.

"I don't think the real attack has come yet, Father Joe," David said
slowly to his visitor, in whose mind this was, in fact, the uppermost
question. Then he added as if to answer a query: "Yes, I will know,
because the others will come at the same time."

152 THE CASES

They both waited. David's visitor knew from previous conversations
who "the others" were. David was convinced that his release from this
trial could only come through the spirits of Salem Old Edward had
mentioned on his deathbed. But somehow or other Old Edward was
now associated in David's mind with those spirits.

Then David said: "It's been bad but bearable up to this." Father
Joseph shot a discreet look at David: his eyes were hooded as he gazed
down at the table. Joseph looked away in an embarrassment he himself
could not understand. David's voice was deep, very deep, and every
word came out as if a special effort was needed to form it.

"No," David went on, answering another unspoken query of
Joseph's. "There is nothing you can do. Must fight it alone. Pray.
That's all. Pray. A lot. Pray for me."

There was another long silence. By now, Joseph knew that the
silence between them was chockful of a conversation he could not pin
down. He could not make out how it progressed or what it concerned
exactly. Joseph was a simple man without any subtle ideas and with no
complexities in spirit. His heart and instincts had not been smothered
in any pseudointellectualism. He did realize that it was a conversation
so subtle and intimate that it flew high above all words, in fact did not
need words. It passed between them in another medium. But Joseph
warily refused even to visualize that medium. He felt that too near an
acquaintance with it would mean he would never be able to talk with
words again. Words were beginning to be crude, vulgar lumps of
sound, insensitive, uncouth, meaningless. David and Joseph were both
walking at that moment beyond the thin edge dividing language from
meaning, and meaning was now a cloud enveloping them both.

Father Joseph waited until he felt from David that he should leave.
Then he started to rise unhurriedly. David said: "Say a Mass for them.
They need prayers. I failed them. Now I need them, their help, and
their forgiveness." Joseph looked at him questioningly, then stopped
the words rushing to his lips. Joseph now believed that David had
already been "visited."

For the next week, his fourth at the farm, David's days and the
greater portion of his nights were spent on the chair by the bay
window. For the last day or so before the final struggle, a curious
silence had fallen over him. It was not ominous or fear-filling. But it
was so profound and so devoid of any movement in his thoughts,
emotions, and memories that the doubt and uncertainty it provoked in
him took on proportions of agonizing anticipation.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 153

Yet no amount of anticipation quite conveyed the anguished reality
of his 'Visitors" and their 'Visit."

The first hint of their presence came about eleven o'clock one night.
All that day a storm had raged around the farm. The storm had
prevented Father Joseph from making his promised weekly visit.
David had spent the time contemplating the sheeting rain and the
lightning flashes from his window. Then, except for a distant rumble of
thunder and an occasional, sudden, whipping shower, the storm was
spent.

David sensed the cloak of exhaustion that always fell quietly on the
countryside after it had been thrashed and seared and smothered by
wind, lightning, thunder, and rain. Usually the land shook off that
cloak quickly and resumed its habitual night stance as a repository of
energies hatching, breathing, coiling, exercising, pulsating, self-renew-
ing, waiting for the sun and the light of the new day.

He waited for the inevitable rustling and quickening in the fields
outside the house. But tonight the silence of exhaustion seemed to
prolong itself. A commanding hand had stopped the course of nature
in order to make way for special visitors. And, in David's conscious-
ness, all these changes resided as mere overtones to his mood.

The most acute and self-aware point in his being was still a pulse of
expectancy, of waiting that grew deeper and deeper with the
prolonged silence over the land. Once more David seemed to hang
over that pitch-black void. Waiting seemed once more to be his very
essence, the only reason for his continued existence. ''As long as I can
wait . . ." was his mood. Waiting, straining, to hear, to see.

After perhaps an hour, he knew that somewhere near him there was
a curious sound.

At first, when he heard it, his attention did not pick it up. It was so
faint, it might have been the sound and feel of the blood pumping in
his own ears. But after a few seconds, he began to distinguish it. His
body stiffened as the sound grew ever so slightly louder.

He could not identify the sound. Within him, yet in some way
connected with the faint sound, little wisps of memory touched his
consciousness briefly, tantalizing him as they skipped by, leaving him
all the tenser. He seemed to remember. Little splinks, jagged
fragments of shattered mirrors reflecting some shadow life; but he
could not make out exactly what was being recalled to him.

He realized that the act of trying to remember was itself a blockage
to remembering, the act of thinking a hindrance to knowing. At one

154 THE cases

point, the sound died away completely. He was suddenly alone. And
he found himself falling back on the chair brusquely. He had been half
out of it, apparently, in his craning forward to listen. His palms and
forehead were wet. And his yearning to know seemed infinitely sad.

Then the sound started again. David realized now it was coming
from no particular direction. Not from outside the house. Not from
inside it. Nor could he say it was coming from all directions at once.
He felt foolishly that in some way or other it was a permanent sound
that had always been there around him. He always had heard it. But
he had never listened to it, or ever allowed himself even to
acknowledge that he heard it.

He turned his head right and left. He twisted around, listening to
the interior of the room. And with a sudden violence he understood
why the sound seemed to come from no direction. For the first time in
his life, he knew what it was to hear a sound registering in his brain
and mind without any of the normal exterior conditions of hearing —
no sound waves, no exterior source of sound, no function of his
eardrums. Beyond all doubts or caviling, he knew that it was real
sound which could not be heard with the external ear.

The physical strangeness of that new hearing had a mysterious
warmth of reality. It was more real than any other sound he could ever
hear in the physical world. It broke the silence of the night and his
vigil more penetratingly than if a gunshot had exploded outside the
window. Intensely pleasurable, because so secret. Deeply relieving,
because it dismissed the silence around him in a fashion so intimate to
him alone. Absorbing, because it came from no place, yet filled all his
inner hearing. But cowing, because in some transcendent way it had
no tenderness.

That sound was a whole revelation. He now understood that there
was a knowledge of material things and a way of having that
knowledge — in this case, of sounds — which did not come through his
senses. His fear and distrust battled with this realization whenever a
stray sound — the cry of a bird in the night, the hooting of an
owl — struck his hearing in the normal way. These new, fearful,
wallowing sounds seemed to belong to the very substance of audible
things and his hearing of them to be absolutely true hearing. The
external sounds of the night — even the occasional shuffle of his own
feet on the floor — seemed to belong to a fleeting world, artificial, not
real at all, but constructed merely by external stimuli and by his own
physical reactions.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I55

The babel of internal sounds was growing, and the "artificial" world
of his normal life appeared to be like a flimsy trellis with wide gaps or
a wall made of widely separated wires. A crude, blustering, over-
whelming new reality was rushing in through the holes.

With that, David began to understand vaguely what possession
meant, for that inrushing babel was in control of him. He could not
eliminate it, repel it, examine and analyze it, decide he liked it or
disliked it. It allowed him no reflection or rejection, did not elicit
acceptance, caused neither pleasure nor pain, disgust nor delight. It
was neutral. Because neutral, it was baleful. And it began to shade his
mind and will with its own neutrality of taste and judgment more
wasting than an Arctic wind. Whatever beauty, harmony, and
meaning had been associated in his memory with sound now began to
wither. He felt that withering keenly. He knew its dreadful implica-
tions.

"My God! Jesus!" he suddenly screamed to himself without sound.
"My God! If all my senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch— are
invaded like that, I'd be possessed. I'd be possessed. Jesus! I'd be
possessed."

He tried to say "Jesus" out loud, to cry out some prayer such as the
Hail Mary or the Our Father, some prayer he knew and had said a
couple of thousand times every year for the past 35 or 40 years. But he
heard no sound at all from his own lips. He was sure that he had
pronounced the words. But possession of his hearing was too far gone.

The babel grew louder and louder by infinitesimal but relentless
degrees. The sound itself was without rhythm, David remembers. It
was a combination of thousands of little sounds, literally a babel of
sounds. It grew louder — approached him in that sense. The many little
sounds started to harmonize into two or three particular syllables he
could not rightly distinguish. The sounds grew greater, but they
coalesced at such a slow pace and with what seemed such intermina-
bly long pauses between changes, that a new oppression began to
cramp his mind and body. It was his craning, waiting, expecting, his
anticipation — all stirred into pain by the hard stick of fear inside hiin.
Yet, within him, some strong, indomitable muscle of soul held firm.

As the coalescing little voices took shape and rhythm, David began
to hear the beat of those syllables louder and more distinctly. As the
beating rhythm took body, he found his body swaying in unison, his
feet beating on the floor, his hand beating on his knee, his head and
shoulders jerking forward and backward. He still could not make out

I56 THE CASES

the syllables, but the rhythmic beating was animating every part of his
body. His own lips started to pick up a syllable now and then. The
voices grew louder still. Thousands of them. And more thousands. And
more.

Falteringly but with greater accuracy his lips searched out the
sounds and fell into unison with the voices that were grating out those
syllables louder and louder and louder. His tension grew. His physical
movements went faster and faster. The sound of the voices was a roar
in his inner hearing now. His own voice picked up the syllables.

Mister Natch . . . Mister Natch . . . Mister Natch . . . Mister
Natch . . .

A whole army of voices was marching through his brain and soul,
shouting, grating, hitting, screeching that last syllable, Natch! Natch!
Natch! Natch!, until David felt he was going to turn into a palpitating,
jerking string of taut muscles and mad sound.

As the noise reached a crescendo, David had practically let go,
surrendered, was waiting for disintegration through sound. Then a
new and utterly different note echoed through the din. He stopped
slipping, surrendering. Some inner part of him that had not been
tainted now came alive.

The new sound was clear, somewhat like a bell, but he knew no
metal produced that sound; he knew its notes would not die when the
hour sounded and passed. It was a sound that sang rather than rang. It
echoed with a promise of permanence, sustained, continuous. It was a
living sound. And while it had the haunting beauty of tonal silver
speaking musically and without words through purest air, it also came
sheathed in that liquidity and warmth whose message is love achieved.

As David's heart sprang up toward the new song, he began to abhor
all the more that loutish chant, Mister Natch! Mister Natch! Mister
Natch! But still he could not free himself from its violent, seductive
force. And so there formed a void, an abyss, an unbridgeable chasm
whose walls were made of sound, whose floor was purest pain. One
part of his mind became a bed of shaking, blustering depression; and
his will recoiled from it in spasms of disgust. Another part of his mind
was transfused with calm and secure freedom full of repose, immune
to any fleck of darkness. "Between us and thee there is a great gulf
fixed . . . they who would pass over it, cannot. " Bits of fright shot like
electricity around ragtag phrases trailing in David's memory.

And sound, always sound. Thumping, roaring, cantankerous, rau-
cous, reeling round him like coils that deafened him and smothered

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 157

him. And then, fresh and far, far above in some region of sunlight and
upland calm out of any possible reach, but reaching him nonetheless,
there was that other note, opposite, intimate, welling with unimagin-
able sweetness that wet his face with tears of yearning.

At a certain point, all this immersion in sounding opposites and
echoing contradictions became both diversified and intensified. The
conflict for possession of his hearing was extended to his other senses
and to his inner pooling of senses. As the conflict increased and seeped
through him, the fonts of fear and desire, of repugnance and attraction
welled up until all his senses echoed his agony.

He fell on his knees, his forehead pressed against the cold glass of
the window, his hands locked in prayer, his eyes wide open and staring
out at the night but unseeing of other eyes that watched from outside.
For the next few interminable minutes, the hurricane contention
between good and evil always twisting violently through our human
landscape was funneled and focused on that kneeling figure of David,
and the conflict seized him totally.

Suddenly, at one moment, he was floating on an inland lake of
unruffled waters within delightful valleys carpeted in green woods and
peaceful lawns of wild flowers. Ahead lay an eastern sky, its clear blue
face bronzed by a rising sun. Then just as suddenly, he was tossing
frenetically on a mountain river rushing through a high gorge into
which no sunlight reached. Nothing seemed to keep him from
drowning or being impaled and crushed on shark-toothed rocks and
ugly-headed crags. His body was carried through cascades and rapids
overhung and hemmed in by gigantic battlements of sheer cliffs rent
with narrow chasms and inhanging precipices. Throughout this
violence, he was pursued by the clomping of Mister Natch and wooed
by the lilting notes of that other music from far above.

Then again, without warning, all the confusing contrasts increased
in speed and variety. He was jammed into a quick-change theater
alternating between horror and relief, beauty and beastliness, life and
death. There was no sense, neither rhyme nor reason to it all. Now he
saw delicate-limbed, silk-clad bodies dancing on a green platform and
starching rhythms on the winds. Then, quick as a flash, he was
scrutinizing eviscerated corpses, open bellies with the guts plopping
and slobbering out on thighs and knees, bodies slit from chin to chine,
severed breasts, gobs of eyes and fingers and hair, carpets of
excrement. Now it was bunches of heavy, ripe fruit draped between
trees or entwined in Spanish moss on a great levee. Then, in the

I58 THE CASES

kaleidoscope of insanity that was David's world in those excruciating
moments, it was heavy canisters of urine pierced with holes, spraying
the gaping eyes and mouths of cadavers, thousands of cadavers, men,
women, children, fetuses, thrown higgledy-piggledy over a stony plain.

As the bewildering, horrifying sets of images tumbled in front of his
eyes, he felt his control ebbing. He was only sure of one thing: two
forces were contending for possession of him, and he could not avoid
the flooding of his senses. He could not rid them either of the filth or
the beauty. All his life he had been able to control himself. Now
control was gone. The invasion continued.

The confusion reached his taste and sense of smell; it invaded every
sense and every nuance of his being that was fed by his senses. Bitter
and sweet, acrid and flowing, cesspool and perfume, sting and caress,
animal and human, edible and inedible, vomit and delicacy, rough and
smooth, subtle and pointed, shocking and wafting, dizzying and
calming, aching and pleasuring — the contrasts jangled every taste bud
and nerve in his mouth, throat, nose, and belly.

He reached the point of near-hysteria when his sense of touch was
attacked: every centimeter of his skin was being scraped with rough
scales and stroked with velvet, burned by hot points and pained by
icicles, then relaxed and massaged by gentle warmth and frictionless
surfaces.

The storm in his senses grew more and more intense according as
each of the contradictory sensations was pooled within him to make a
jigsaw mosaic of nonsense, confusion, aimlessness, helplessness.

Yet, even with all control lost, somehow his mind and will sought an
answer to the ultimate question: Why can't I resist? What must I do to
repel this? What motivation can I use to expel it all? What do 1 do? He
realized clearly enough that his time was not up, that all was not lost
yet; that somewhere in him something must be healthy and active still.
For all the while he clung to one thing: the more intense the distortion
became and the tighter the grip exercised on him, the more the sheer
horror and pain paralyzed any initiative in him — the more beautiful
and winning became that song from above.

Its lovely sound was still at immeasurable distances and unreachable
heights. In some way he could not understand, however, it was near
him. He began to fight for the strength to hear it, to listen. It was not
monochrome or single-toned. It was a chant of many voices; it
harmonized some ineffable joy with sweeping clusters of chords and
congregations of soaring grace notes. Adagio, it was grave but happy.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH I59

Resounding, it had a coolness clinging to it. At once it had all the traits
of love — its gentle teasing, its collusion and connivance, its favoritism;
and beating within it, there was a steady organ-like pulsation that ran
deeper than the heart of the universe and as high as the eternal
placidness men have always ascribed to unchanging divinity.

At one surprising moment in all the din and the pain, David's heart
leaped. It was his only moment of relief and peace, and it came just
before the climax of his struggle. It was not so much a beguiling lull
that sometimes fools the priest in more ordinary exorcisms. It was a
song he somehow knew, sung by voices he somehow knew. And
although he could not recollect the song or who was singing it, he
knew he was not alone. "Jesus! I'm not alone," he heard himself
muttering. "I'm not alone!"

He began to distinguish several voices in that gentle song. He knew
them! He knew them! He could not recognize them, but he knew
them. They were friends. Where? When? Who were they? He had
known them for years, he realized. But who were they? And as the
new feeling penetrated to his inner senses and clashed with his
loneliness, a wild seesawing emotion started to filter further and
further into his mind and will and imagination. He found himself
babbling incoherent phrases which were at first unintelligible even to
himself. The phrases seemed to come from some inner faculty he had
always used but never acknowledged, some source of knowledge that
he had neglected for all his years as an adult and a professional
intellectual.

"My Salem chorus . . . my loved ones . . ." The phrases were
squeezed out of him by some force and strength of his own, his very
own. "My friends . . . Edward's friends. . . . Come nearer. . . .
Forgive me . . ."

A tiny eddy of understanding began to form in him as he tapped the
memory of Old Edward's last days and of the visit to Salem long years
ago. It was just in time. For in that moment there began what proved
to be the last phase of David's trial.

Moments of terror gripped David immediately: suddenly he felt
everything, everything had been wrenched from his grasp and he
could not find in himself any conscious reason to reject the clamorous
and oppressive influence of Mister Natch. His mind again seemed to
be a mere receptacle. His will — the will he had always relied on
consciously for his discipline in study and his practical decisions —
seemed to be at bay again and unable to carry him to victory.

l6o THE CASES

Terror deepened as his mind became more and more confused, and
his will was overcome and strapped down and immobilized by
contradictory and poisonously neutralizing motives. What poured into
his mind and filled his spirit was like venom.

A pell-mell mob of reasons squealed and screamed within him.
Mister Natch pulsed and rasped horribly: Hoc est corpus meum . . .
Hocus-pocus Jesus is, a crucified donkey. . . . Good and truth is man 's
highest goal. . . . How delightful and human to try the most unhuman.
. . . Jesus, Mary, and . . . Satan, devils can fuck, fuck, fuck. . . . I
give you my heart and my . . . God will not allow evil. . . . Good is as
banal as bad, have both. . . . I desire the salvation of the Cross . . .
and I hope to taste the liberty of blasphemy. . . . I love . . . I
hate . . . I believe . . . I disbelieve. . . . He created Jesus out of
slime . . . and said this my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
David's will was numbed with pain and exhaustion. All this while, his
senses were attacked and confused with the same jangling conflict,
until in a land of indescribable idiocy and confusion his touch, his
smell, his hearing all echoed: The good is too good to be true. . . . The
evil is too evil not to be true. . . . What is true?

Now, no solution, no escape, no alternative to the dilemma, no
determining factor, no deciding weight in the balance seemed
possible. Lost. All lost. All that David had studied, every highway and
byway of intellectual reasoning, psychological subtlety, theological
proof, philosophical logic, historical evidence — all these became like
so many objects, not parts of him, only mere possessions and trash he
had accumulated, now thrown into flames that advanced across the
threshold of his very being. Everything he threw at those flames was
seized, melted, dissipated, mere fuel, unable to resist the burning.

Blackness had almost fully beclouded his mind when David became
aware that one thing still remained. Something that defied the
blackness and the clouding. Something that rose in him strongly,
independently every time that strange, insistent song dominated the
clamor wrapping him around. At first, he was merely aware of the
sound. Then he began to marvel at its strength, and not at its loudness,
for he could not always hear it, but at its persistence in the middle of
his pain and encroaching despair. He tried to reflect on it and on the
strength that rose in him like a responding chord, but immediately he
lost all awareness of it. And, immediately again, the struggle set in, and
his attention turned. And no sooner did he hear the song again than
that strange, autonomous strength within him rose up.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH l6l

All at once he knew what that strength was. It was his will. His
autonomous will. He himself as a freely-choosing being.

With a sidelong glance of his mind, he dismissed once and for all
that fabric of mental illusions about psychological motivations, behav-
ioral stimulations, rationales, mentalistic hedges, situational ethics,
social loyalties, and communal shibboleths. All was dross and already
eaten up and disintegrated in the flames of this experience which
might still consume him.

Only his will remained. Only his freedom of spirit to choose held
firm. Only the agony of free choice remained.

"My Salem chorus!" he heard himself say. "My friends! Pray for me.
Ask Jesus for me. Pray for me. I have to choose."

Now a specific and peculiar agony beset David. He had never
known it before. Indeed, afterwards he wondered for a long time how
many real choices he had made freely in his life before that night. For
it was that agony of choosing freely — totally freely — that was now his.
Just for the sake of choosing. Without any outside stimuli. Without any
background in memory. Without any push from acquired tastes and
persuasions. Without any reason or cause or motive deciding his
choice. Without any gravamen from a desire to live or to die — for at
this moment he was indifferent to both. He was, in a sense, like the
donkey medieval philosophers had fantasized as helpless, immobilized,
and destined to starve because it stood equidistant from two
equivalent bales of hay and could not decide which one to approach
and eat. Totally free choice.

Mister Natch's clomping rhythm now became the grotesque accom-
paniment of an evil and sickening burlesque of distortion. A satyr face
and body loomed in David's imagination — so real that he saw it with
his eyes. Naked. Obscenely sprawled. Bulbous. The nose pointing in
one askew direction. Two eyes squinting in opposite directions. Mouth
grinning, foaming, crooked. Throat gurgling insane chuckles. Heavy
female breasts blotched with warts, hanging nipples, blood-red, and
pointing like twin penises. Legs apart, streaked with blood and sperm.
One toe doubled back into the crotch scratching and rubbing
frenetically. Twisted, irregular fingers with broken nails pulling at
lumps of hair and gesturing crudely. Clots of caked excrement around
the buttocks.

David caught the odor of cowstalls and open-air privies. He
remembered the devil figures of the Greeks and the Asmat. He felt the
oldest pull recorded in the history of the human heart. He felt it as an

l62 THE CASES

ancient seed of evil he had received from all who went before him, not
as a physical gift of terrible import but as a consequence of his being
born of their line and, in a sense, accumulating all the evil they had
transmitted. Not evil acts. Nor evil impulses. Neither guilts nor shame.
Nothing positive. Rather an absence amounting to a fatal flaw. A
deathly lack. A capacity for self-hatred, for suicide, not because he
could not live forever but because he could so live if only . . . That
tantalizing "if only" of mortality which aspires infinitely without being
infinite itself. The fames peccati of the Latins. The yetzer ha-ra of the
Hebrews. "Ye can be as gods knowing good and evil," the Serpent had
said in the Bible myth — not adding "but capable only of evil, if left to
yourselves."

He had to choose. The freedom to accept or reject. A proposed step
into a darkness. The song from on high was silent. The clamor of
Mister Natch was stilled. All seemed waiting on his next step. His own.
Onlv his.

Even to be neutral was a decision. For to be neutral now was to take
refuge in cynicism; to say, "I don't want to know;" to refuse an appeal
for trust; to be alone; just to be.

For a split second it seemed he should turn back and call for the
consolation of evil — at least he would be under a tangible control and
possessed by that which corresponded to one of his deepest urges. But
it was only for a second, because from beyond that crag of decision he
heard — or thought he heard — a great cry coming across an infinite
distance, not in protest, not in hysteria, not in despair; rather a cry
from a soul driven to the outermost point of endurance by pain and
disgrace and abandonment. He heard that cry take several forms:
"Abba, Father!" "Mother, behold!" "Lord, Remember me!" "In this
sign . . ."

It was all David needed to push him, even pursued by his fears, past
that crag. He began to think words again, to open his lips, mouthing
them soundlessly.

Then panic rose. What if it were all delusion, mocking delusion?
The panic became pandemonium in his brain. But now it was matched
and outstripped by his violent wish to speak, to get those words out in
living sound. Somehow, if it took his last strength, if it cost him his life,
he had to pronounce them audibly. His intentions would not be
humanly real until he did . . . unless he did.

In his agony, still on his knees and still facing the window of his

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 163

room, David remained so absorbed in this last effort that he still did
no'5: notice the figure standing outside the window. Father Joseph had
waited at home for the storm to abate, and then set out for the farm.
The only light in the place had been from Davids window. Now he
stood outside trying to guess what was happening to his friend inside.
"Help him. Mother of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, ask for help for him,
please." He could see David's lips working silently and his wide,
sightless eyes staring into the night.

Joseph was about to tap on the window or wake up the others in the
house when he heard David cry out loud, at first in a staccato fashion,
then firmly and connectedly and vibrantlv: "I choose . . . I will ... I
believe. . . . Help my unbelief . . . Jesus! ... I believe I believe I
believe." Joseph stood stock-still and listened. He could only see
David's face and hear his words. He could not enter his consciousness,
where the twin chants had once again sounded to the very depth of his
soul.

But it was different for David now. He had chosen, and the result
was instantaneous. He found, not destruction and helplessness and
childish weakness, and not the black slavery of mind and will that
Mister Natch had taunted would be the fruits of belief. Instead, a great
and breathtaking dimension full of relief and distance and height and
depth flooded his mind and will and imagination.

As if the darkness and agony behind him had been but a little
transitory test, the horizons of life and existence were miraculously
clear now. The air was suffused with serene sunlight and great, calm
spaces of blue.

Every scale, measurement, and extension of his life was clothed in
the grace and comeliness of a freedom he had always feared losing but
had never been sure he possessed. Every slope he had climbed as a
young boy — his first attempts at thinking, at feeling, at judging
morally, at self-expression — were now covered in beds of high flowers
scented, like violets and harebells and columbine. Every cranny and
niche where his feet had caught and he had tripped and stumbled
during his early intellectualism at the university were now filled with
springing green grass.

And his greatest wonder was his new sky, his fresh horizon. Over the
years his human sky had become a cast-iron grating — he had been able
to send an odd plea winging through the little holes. But his horizon
itself had become a tall, unscalable mesh of steel; it was misted with

164 THE CASES

unknowing and agnosticism: with the "We cannot know exactly" of
the pseudointellectual, the "Let's keep an open mind" that opens
every argument against belief.

Now, suddenly, with his decision made, David's sky was a dustless
depth of expanding space. His horizon was an open vastness receding,
receding, receding, ever receding, without obstacle or limit or speck or
narrowness. He saw himself immeasurably high up, free of trammels,
on a zenith of desire and volition, clear of all backward-looking,
unhampered by cloying regrets or by wisping mice of memory
gnawing at his untried sexuality and his unexpected whims.

David was in full view of all he ever signified as a human being and
all that being human ever signified for him, at the ancient heart of
man's millennial weakness and on the peak of man's gratuitously given
power to be with God, to be of God, and to live forever.

The many figures that had peopled his past he now saw within the
eternal light — Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Sinanthropos, Homo sapiens,
food gatherers, food producers, Stone Age men, Bronze Agers, Iron
Agers, Jew, Crusader, Muslim, Renaissance Pope, Russian Patriarch,
Greek priest, Catholic cardinal, Asiatic Buddha, African devil, Satan,
Darwin, Freud, Mao, Lenin, the poor of Sekelia, the running and
burning figures in the streets of Hiroshima, the dying babies of
Bombay, the houses in California's Bel Air, the lecture halls of the
Sorbonne, the villas of Miami Beach, the mines of West Virginia, the
wafer in his own hands at Mass, the lifeless face of Jonathan. . . .

He was just about to fall into prayer when, for an instant, he heard
the two chants again. He was jerked out of his visioning back to the
reality of the chair, the bay window, and the night. The heavenly
chant was now no more than a single prolonged note on a lute,
persistent, limpid, clear, beautiful. Mister NatcfTs grating chant had
been diluted and shattered.

By some mysterious proxy, David felt the pangs of an agony he did
not regret. He was, he knew, assisting at the inescapable woe of some
living beings whom he did not know, whom he had to hate, but whose
fate was catastrophic disaster unmitigated by any poignancy or any
pity. Despite the flooding peace and light washing over his spirit, he
found himself following the desperate retreat o^ his wounded adver-
saries.

The once-muscular, breathing cries of Mister Natch had now
narrowed to a thin, piping wail shot through with trills of terror,
arpeggios of agony running feverishly and irregularly through every

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 165

note of protest. That lingering wail seemed to spiral up, twisting and
writhing and curling, an insect shaking poisonous antennae while it
scuttled backward desperately for home cover in the sewer, a snake
whose body was a solid, pulsating pain, stabbing its head upward as it
moved away from the fluid lava of that other resounding note — what
David always described afterward as his "Salem chorus."

Then he began to feel great distances again. Mister Natch's clamor
dwindled, always pursued by that chant of Heaven. As it all grew
fainter, David stood up, listening intently. The two chants were
withdrawing from him. He flung open the double windows and looked
out past Joseph's shoulder, his gaze traveling to the garden and,
beyond, to the countryside, the mountains, the horizon. As the sounds
withdrew, sucked, as it were, into uncharted spaces among the stars
overhead, he searched the sky. The storm center had slipped away to
the Eastern seaboard to be spent over the Atlantic. It was cold,
probably freezing. Up among the stars he tried to follow the trajectory
of those sounds. But the last faint echoes died. All was quiet. He
listened, gazing silently upward. There was no sound.

A slow smile of recognition appeared around his eyes and at the
corners of his mouth, as he heard the rustling energies of the earth
recovering themselves after the storm.

His glance rested finally on Father Joseph, and he motioned him to
step inside. The moon was already riding high, bright-faced, a warm,
yellow hue to its light. Its very silence was golden and gentle and
confident. He and Joseph were about to turn away from the window
into the room when a mockingbird started to sing down in the copse
where Old Edward used to stroll smoking his pipe in the evenings
after dinner. That song came to David as a message from a world of
grace, a hint of life without ending; not as Jonathan and as he, David,
had taken such sounds of nature; not as intimations of molecules
endlessly regrouping, but of endless life for each person, and of love
without a shadow.

David sank into his chair and listened. Joseph stood motionless,
afraid to disturb him. He looked away from David out at the sky and
the trees. All night long until the moon sank and the early lights of the
sun streaked from the east, first blue and gray, then red, the two men
stayed there, while only the mockingbird's song broke the silence. The
song seemed to take on the unruffled calm of infinity. It filled their ears
and minds. It poured into every corner and cranny of the room where
they were. It was surprising, full of unexpected flights and long,

l66 THE CASES

graceful sustainments that teetered on to the edge of melody, then
swung away just in time to take up new scales. It was not triumphant.
It was celebration of calm, proclamation of continuity, assertion of
living's value, confirmation of beauty for beauty's sake, assurance of a
morrow as well as blessing on all yesterdays. It came as annunciation,
and filled their night silence with grace.

Toward the dawn Joseph heard a low whisper and glanced at David.
He was reciting the Ave Maria in the Greek of Paul and Luke and
John: "Chaire Miryam, kecharitomene" and repeating that long,
leaping compliment the Angel Gabriel paid the Virgin: "Kecharito-
mene! Kecharitomene! Kecharitomene! . . . Full of Grace! Full of
Grace! Full of Grace!" Slow tears ran down David's cheeks.

There was no point, Joseph knew, in disturbing him now. The peace
of silence and that song were all he needed and what he deserved, all
the balm he wanted.

They waited until day broke full and the mockingbird had trilled to
silence in a quick descent. They saw it take off from the trees and soar
up, singing again as it went until it was a mere speck in the lightening
color of the morning sky, alternately sailing and fluttering, until it
faded from sight into silence.

David stirred and moistened his lips. He did not look at Father
Joseph, but just said: ''Let's make some coffee, Father Joe. Then let's
get over to Jonathan, before it's too late." Father Joseph did not stir.
He was waiting for David's glance and some word. David turned and
smiled at the other man: "I know now, Joe. I now know." He paused
and looked out the window again. "It is the same spirit. The same
method. The same slavery."

A MOTHER'S SONG

Joseph glanced at David's face as he drove. It was firm and
expressionless, save for a certain granite-like set to the jawline. His
cheeks were hollow, but the growth of his beard filled his face out. The
eyes were steady. David seemed driven by some powerful inner force
Joseph felt much more than he understood. It made him a little afraid.
He sensed vaguely a touch of ruthlessness, a downright and decisive
thrust. He looked away from David; and, without warning, he found
himself laughing quietly with a surprising surge of ironic humor.
"What's the joke, Joe?" It was good to see David's mouth soften.

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH 167

Father Joseph had found himself saying spontaneously, "God help
the poor Devil," when he saw the determined look on David's face.
David grinned and threw an admiring look at his companion. "God
bless you, Father Joe. You're never in any danger. You never took
yourself seriously enough." Then they both laughed.

They reached Jonathan's house just after sundown that same day.
David decided against waiting to round up assistants. He knew he
would be in control of this case; he knew he had already bested the
"Mister Natch" that had taken Jonathan so much farther into
possession than David himself had been.

When they drew up at the house, the front door was open.
Jonathan's mother, Sybil, stood in the doorway, a shawl around her
shoulders. She was not smiling, but not sad, just quietly matter-of-fact.

"You were expected, Father David," she said, as the two men
entered. "They told me you were coming." Then, in answer to the
query in David's eyes, she explained that until early that morning,
until about three o'clock, Jonathan had been all right; that is, he had
remained unchanged. "But," she continued, "when you were liber-
ated, he suddenly got very bad."

Joseph was stunned; he could not believe he had heard her say to
David, "when you were liberated." But David's eyes were filled with
understanding as she went on. "I'm not worried about my son's body.
It's his soul."

For some seconds David stood looking at her. Joseph knew he was
excluded from an intimate understanding between these two people.
But he knew too that the price of being included was too dreadful.

On the hall table beside them two candles were already lit. Side by
side with them were crucifix, ritual book already open, holy-water
flask, and stole.

"It shouldn't be too late yet," David spoke.

"It shouldn't be," she rejoined. Then grimacing gently: "It's just I
have not long to go myself. And if he must go too, I want us all to be
together."

David nodded his head slowly while he stared at the door beyond
her. His mood was part wariness, part musing. Then he returned her
gaze, saying: "You will be, Mother. Have no fear. You will all be
together. The worst is over."

He slipped the stole around his shoulders, took the ritual book and
holy-water flask in hand. Joseph held the candlesticks. David looked at
the open pages of the ritual. Jonathan's mother had opened it at the

l68 THE CASES

page where the main prayer started. Stepping past her, he turned the
doorknob and entered Jonathan's room.

It was shuttered and dark. An unnaturally acrid and fetid odor hit
his nostrils. Jonathan was sitting on the floor in the far corner, his feet
doubled up beneath him. The light from the corridor fell across his
face. David read the terror in his eyes, but it was a frozen terror. And
David knew immediately: Jonathan would do nothing more, would
struggle no more.

Jonathan's mouth was open. But neither tongue nor teeth were
visible. Joseph placed the candles on the small night table by the bed.
As the light fell on Jonathan, they noticed a curving line of fresh water
drops running from wall to wall. His mother had shaken holy water
recently in a semicircle pinning her son into the corner. One hand lay
by Jonathan's side, but the other, the one with the crooked forefinger,
lay on his chest in an eerie gesture. He was deathly still; but his eyes
were glued on David's face and followed him as he moved closer.

As David stood over him, Jonathan's eyes were large, bloodshot
whites with little half-moons of black irises glinting up at David.

Joseph expected David to start immediately, but David said
nothing. He stood there. Silence.

Jonathan's crooked forefinger stirred from his chest in a slight
motion toward David. David looked, still and silent. The forefinger
wavered in thin air, then fell back stiffly. It was a gesture of
helplessness. Jonathan's mouth opened and closed; he was trying to
say something.

Still David did not budge or say anything.

Jonathan moved his head from side to side, his eyes still fixed on
David, as if he was trying to pry himself loose from some ropes of
influence binding him to David. A sudden and visible tremor ran
through his body, and he turned his face and body away from David to
the wall. He was shaking all over. They could barely hear the words
which came muffled and thick from his mouth.

"Speak to me, Brother . . ."

"No brother, Satan! No brother!" David's voice was like a heavy
knife. Joseph winced. David was silent again.

"We too have to possess our habitation, Father . . ." the voice
began.

"Your habitation is forever in outer darkness. And your father is the
Father of Lies." The trenchant sneer in David's voice again hit even

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH l6g

Joseph where it hurt. David, he understood, hated and loathed more
than Joseph ever dreamed a man could hate and loathe.

"Even the Anointed One gave us a place with the swine."

"As a sign of your filth," David spat the words out, "and as an
indication of your being buried alive in torments."

"Listen! . . . Listen!" the voice went on with a deathly note of
desperation. It was almost a wail. "Listen!"

"You will listen and you will obey!" David was not shouting. But
every word exploded from within him as a living missile. "You will all
obey! You will go forth! You will relinquish all possession of this
creature! You will do this in the name of God who created him and
you, and of Jesus of Nazareth who saved him! You will depart and get
back to the uncleanness and agony you chose. You will do it now. In
the name of Jesus. Now. Go. Depart. In the name of Jesus."

Then David's voice changed. He was speaking to Jonathan from a
reserve of tenderness and affection clothed in strength that moved
Joseph as deeply as he had been shocked just a moment previously.

"Jonathan! Jonathan! I know you hear me. And hearing me, you
hear the words of Jesus." Jonathan's body started to rack and tremble.
He began to stretch out face down on the floor until only his fingertips
touched the corner in which he had been slumped. David and Joseph
moved back a pace.

"I know," David continued, "what you have been through. I know
where you failed. I know how you were possessed by this unclean
spirit. Jesus has paid for all your sins, as he did for mine. But now you
have to pay. Believe me, I know. I know that only you can finally
consent. With your will, Jonathan. With your will. But you must
consent to suffer the punishment. Do you consent, Jonathan? Do you
consent? Consent! Jonathan! Consent! For the love of Jesus, consent
with your whole will!"

Then to Joseph: "Sprinkle some holy water!" Joseph obeyed. David
opened the ritual book and started to recite the official prayers.

From Jonathan's mouth there came a howl lasting longer than any
normal breath. David kept reading steadily, while he held up the
crucifix in front of him. According as he progressed in the prayers, the
howl increased, interspersed with dreadful sobs and groans.

But then they heard a thin voice singing. It came from the corridor
outside. Jonathan's mother was chanting a hymn to the Virgin — the
ancient Gregorian chant of the Salve Regina. As the medieval Latin

170 THE CASES

syllables reached them in her little voice, Jonathan's howling and
tremors began bit by bit to diminish. David stopped reading the
prayers; he closed his book and listened.

The timbre of the mother's voice was quavering, reedlike. Yet, for
David and for Joseph, it reached past their conscious recollections,
past all the censor bonds of their adult life, back to the raw hours and
days and months and years when once upon a time they were
vulnerable to the misery of human unhappiness and when the love
they enjoyed from home and family was their only and quite sufficient
safeguard against all wounds.

Jonathan's mother was quite literally putting her soul into that sung
prayer. Her mother's heart was crying to another mother. And, as far
as Joseph could see, only these two mothers could appreciate what was
now at stake. He had never been a highly emotional man; but
memories crowded up in front of him, and he was gently stung by
nostalgia. Joseph's enjoyment of esthetic pleasures had always been
limited by an unsubtle mind and lack of personal culture. To his own
mother he had never spoken as an adult; she died before he matured.

Until this moment, the woman to whom Jonathan's mother was
praying had been merely a brightly lit and inaccessible star in his
religious firmament: a Galilean Jewess who, without personal merit,
without having thought one thought or said one word or performed
one action, had been privileged with a grace no other human would
ever, will ever, receive — to be totally pleasing to God's purest holiness
from the very first instant of her personal existence. That had been the
sum of Mary for Father Joseph. This had been all her dignity. She had
never plucked the flowers of evil. She had been preserved. One of
God's favorites.

Now, listening with David to that chant, he sensed with a speed that
made understanding almost violent what being a mother and what
being a child meant. He grasped the mysterious convivium, the mutual
sharing and togetherness in human living of child and mother, their
presence one to the other. And it dawned on him that that presence
had no parallel elsewhere on the entire landscape of human living —
neither lover to beloved, nor friend to friend, nor citizen to country,
nor man to God.

Now this one mother was singing in prayer to another mother with a
faith and a confidence that no man could summon. He understood: as
mothers who had lived within a filigree work of heartbeat to heartbeat,
breath to breath, movement to movement, sleep to sleep, wakefulness

FATHER BONES AND MISTER NATCH lj]

to wakefulness, they both had been placed, not at the periphery, but at
the luminous center of a child's delicate beginnings in psychophysical
life; and both had seen a child pass across the threshold of birth,
quickening to consciousness, to recognition, to mentalism, to volition,
to meaning.

Jonathan's mother finished the Salve Regina. For a moment there
was silence. Then she improvised a last, spoken prayer. David and
Jonathan heard her say: "You were his mother. You saw him die. You
saw him live again. You understand. You could have died of pain on
either occasion. Help me now."

Joseph felt helpless against the tears that came to his eyes.

He was aroused by David's voice speaking quietly. In the corner
David was kneeling beside Jonathan. Jonathan had sat up and was
leaning, not crouching now, with his back to the wall. Both hands
were in David's.

Joseph turned away to leave the room. He had understood nothing,
he felt. Anyway, it was confession time.

Jonathan had the bleached and windswept look of one whose face
has been torn by pain and weeping, the angelic calm and luminosity —
almost joy — that Joseph had most often seen on the faces of the dying
when, after rebellion and despair, they finally accepted the inevitable
and turned fully to belief and hope.

It was an enviable peace.

The Virgin
and the Girl-Fixer

Suddenly the whole scene changed in that Exorcism room, like an
eerie and expert theater experience where, in a few seconds, the main
actors change costumes and roles and the scenery is switched on
invisible wheels, back to front, upside down, inside out, producing a
kaleidoscope of change that makes everyone blink in disbelief.

At one moment, Father Gerald, the exorcist, was bending over the
possessed, Richard /Rita,* who had sunk his teeth in his own instep. In
the next instant, the glaze in Richard/ Rita's eyes broke, melting into a
lurid gleam of mockery. Greenish. The teeth loosened their grip on the
instep. The mouth opened, baring gums and throat, the tongue
protruded, quivering on a stream of gray foam bubbles. The whole
face was furrowed in irregular lines, as Richard /Rita broke into peals
of laughter. Great buffeting gusts of mocking, jeering, Schadenfreude
laughter. Laughter pouring from a belly of amused scorn and
contemptuous hate.

In a fraction of a second Gerald understood. The Girl-Fixer,
invisible to his eyes, was on him, two claws clutching at his middle. His
assistants heard the raucous laughter. They held their ears. But
Gerald's agony they could not know. All they saw were Gerald's

* Richard O. is a transsexual. In talking about his life before his operation, I refer to him as
Richard O. or simply as Richard. Afterwards, until his exorcism is completed, he is referred to as
Richard/Rita. In conversation, Father Gerald frequently referred to him as R/R. With Richard
O.'s permission, I refer to him throughout this narrative with the masculine pronouns — he, his,
him. Today he calls himself simply Richard O.

174 THE CASES

sudden, violent spasms backward and forward "as if his middle was
caught in a vise"; then the screeching shredding of his cassock and
clothes, leaving him naked from chest to ankles. After that, all details
escaped them in the violent jerkings and writhings of his body.

Gerald felt one claw was now totally sunk in his rectum. Another
claw held his genitals, stretching his scrotum away from his penis,
jerking at him brutally. Both claws were stiff, cutting like the jagged
edge of a tin can, driving deeper and deeper, impaling him. He reeled
away from the couch where Richard/Rita lay laughing, laughing,
laughing, kicking the air and thumping the couch with clenched fists in
deafening bursts of merriment.

Gerald staggered zigzag across the room, bent like a jackknife,
involuntary screams gushing from his throat. One claw rocked back
and forth within him. Slivers of agony jabbed and pierced through his
buttocks and belly and groin, as flesh and veins and mucous membrane
and skin tore and ripped irregularly.

A fetid smell wafted up to his nostrils and from behind his head. The
voice of the Girl-Fixer beat at his eardrums unmercifully: "You're my
sow. I'm on you. Your boar. My snout is giving you the best blow-job
in the Kingdom. Shoot, sow! Spread your legs, sow! Your boar is
mounting your flesh, opening your little untouched hairs. My prick is
taking your virginity. You're no girl. But I'm still the fixer of every
box!"

Gerald staggered in spasms, stumbling over his feet, doubled up,
flaying the air helplessly, leaving a thin trail of semen, blood,
excrement, and screams, until he bumped heavily into the wall, and
fell to the floor in a twisted bundle. Blood sprang from a thin, vertical
split that opened from the middle of his forehead up into his hair.

Richard/ Rita froze into the blazing look again.

The attack had lasted about three seconds. It was over before
the others recovered themselves. Suddenly, Gerald's screams and
Richard/ Ritas laughter stilled, there was a moment without sound in
the room, like the farthest edge of whispers. The raw silence after
raucous, earsplitting noise.

Then, a flurry of voices and activity. The doctor and the police
captain lifted Gerald onto the stretcher that had ironically been
brought for Richard/ Rita. The four men quickly bound Richard /Rita
down tightly to the iron frame of the couch. No one looked at those
eyes. All felt the blazing glance on them, intent, triumphant, smug.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 175

"Like tying down a hot, steamy carcass," one of them recalled
afterwards.

Richard /Rita's two brothers, Bert and Jasper, eyes swollen red with
tears, faces dirtied yellow with panic, carried the stretcher out. As the
assistants left the house, they felt the stark contrast between the scene
they had just witnessed and the outside world. In the garden by the
pond the thrushes were warbling in the first wave of the dawn chorus
Richard/Rita had loved so much and which had drawn him to live
here in the first place. The sun was shining.

Inside, Gerald's priest assistant, Father John, still wearing his
immaculate cassock, settled down in an easy chair to watch and pray.
He was wordless. Just to be sure, he held the crucifix in one hand and
the holy-water flask in the other.

A year earlier, in the ordered life of the seminary, he had known
nothing of all this. Had not even suspected its existence. Evil had been
a definition on the white page of a theology manual. And the Devil,
well, that had been really not more than a mysterious name for a
gentleman thought of in terms of horns, a green face, hooves, and a
forked tail. Now John had the bleached, drained look which only
youth carries when strain and weariness veil its freshness, and it has
neither age lines to show nor makeup to lose, only paled illusions to
shield it. It was 6:20 a.m.

There would now be a delay of four and a half weeks before Gerald
could resume and successfully terminate the exorcism of Richard/ Rita.
The violent outcome of the first part of the exorcism would provoke
many difficulties for Gerald. His own bishop entertained doubts about
Gerald's competency. The psychiatrists involved in Richard/Rita's
case decided that Gerald, a layman to psychology, was meddling
dangerously with Richard/Rita's mental health. Gerald's own health
was a continuing problem. And, as experience taught, even a partial
failure to complete an exorcism meant that eventual completion of it
would be doubly difficult.

Yet — if at all possible — Gerald had to complete the exorcism of
Richard/ Rita. For two main reasons. If Gerald were not personally to
do so, there would be no guarantee that he himself would be immune
from at least harassment — if not worse — by the evil spirit that
possessed Richard/Rita. As it happened, Gerald did not survive very
long after his successful termination of the exorcism. Apart from that,
there was now a definite possibility that an attempt at exorcism by
another person would fail.

I76 THE CASES

GERALD

Gerald's housekeeper, Hannah, showed me through the house into the
garden and called out to the thin figure in shirt and jeans tending the
flower beds at the far end of the garden. As I crossed the lawn, he
waved to me: "Hi! Come over and chat. I want to finish this job before
sunset." It was about 5:30 p.m. The sun was beginning to cool, but its
light was still gilding everything about me in warm yellow.

"Out here among my tulips," said Father Gerald to me with a wave
of the trowel in his left hand, "I have great beauty. And peace, of
course." Still bending over his flowers, as he patted the earth: "Done
much gardening, Malachi, in your time?" I said I had done a little. I
asked if I might take notes of our conversation. He laughed lightly in
assent. From the start. Father Gerald established an atmosphere of
ease: I had been expected; I should take a welcome for granted.

The last thing I had expected to find Gerald doing was tulip
gardening. Sitting weakly in a deep armchair reading, perhaps. Or
hobbling painfully on a stick to meet me with a wan smile. But
enjoying life and tranquillity with obvious measures of physical
well-being and quite evident inner happiness — this was almost a shock
to me.

There were three tulip beds. He was working the middle one.
Beyond them, a row of yellow azaleas. Then the ground sloped down
to rolling prairie fields and distant mountains. Somewhere in the sky a
small airplane droned.

His casualness was contagious. I asked: "What exactly do you like
about your tulips, Gerald?" I was standing over him to one side.

Without looking up, he went on working, answering me slowly and
deliberately. "No claims. You see. They don't clamor at you. They just
are there. Beautifully. Just are" The slight emphasis on that last word
had a faint French roll to it. "As you apparently know" — this last with
a boyish grin, teasing himself wryly more than he was teasing me — "I
have had some dealings with beauty. And the beast. After that, you
know beauty when you meet it." He paused, glancing up at the twin
mountain peaks away to the far left. But the sun was in my eyes and
his features were blurred to me. Then, finishing his thought: "And the
beast."

After a minute or two, Gerald straightened up with an unhurried
gentleness, facing me for the first time, his arms by his sides, his back

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 177

to the sun. Now, four months after he had completed the exorcism of
Richard /Rita, in retirement on the edge of a Midwestern town,
Gerald, according to medical reports, had about five or six more
months to live. At the age of forty-eight he had incurable heart disease
and had already survived two strokes.

The man looking at me was slightly taller than myself. Thin-
shouldered, blond, gray-eyed, he stood in an askew fashion, as if the
center of his torso had been twisted out of shape — a memento not of
the strokes, but of the Girl-Fixer; an ungentle reminder of his exorcism
of Richard /Rita. A scar ran vertically up his forehead into his hairline.
What struck me particularly was his face shining like a beacon — a
light all over it, without any visible source. Then there was a dark,
oblong patch on his forehead between the eyes. Like a nevus. Mutual
friends, referring me to him, had told me about it. "Gerald's Jesus
patch" they had called it jokingly but affectionately. The new scar ran
through the "patch."

Gerald, they had said, never looks into you, just at you. Not until
now did I realize what they meant. Like when you look at a city on a
map in order to find out where it is. It was your context that mattered
to Gerald, where you were at. Only, I did not know then what he saw
as context.

"I know very little about you, except that I am supposed to trust
you. Your name — Malachi Martin. Where you live — New York. You
were a Jesuit once. Some books to your credit. You wanted to see me
about Richard /Rita." His tone was level and low. After a few
moments and still looking at my eyes: "Nothing much else, beyond
that you appear to have peace in you, but" — with a quick glance all
over my face — "you strike me as not having paid all your dues." He
must have noticed some involuntary reaction in me, some unvoiced
protest. "No. Not that. Those dues we hardly ever pay. I meant: you
seem to have tasted beauty's sweetness, but not its awesomeness."

He stopped and looked down at the tulips. "I garden regularly. It
relaxes. Tulips — well, I love their colors, I suppose." Another pause.
The boyish grin again. "Let's take some tulips in to Hannah for the
dinner table."

He bent down again. There had been no tension between us, only
briefly on my part, when he scrutinized me for the first time. And now
the tension had disappeared. He had satisfied himself about some
puzzle in me.

"I do want to talk about Richard /Rita," I said as he set to work

I78 THE CASES

again. "But my chief interest bears on you." He worked on in silence
for a few moments. An early-evening breeze bent the tulips. The
sunlight had dimmed to a very light gray -blue.

"You realize," he said matter-of-factly as if to put to rest any tension
I might still have, "you won't get away with it this time. Not scot-free,
anyway. I mean, if ever you paid your dues, you'll pay thern now — if
you go ahead with your project."

"I have thought about all that."

"This is no mere fun and games, Malachi. You're treading on their
turf. Dangerously. From their point of view. If I can believe my
friends, that is." I began to notice his staccato style of speaking. "But I
suppose. You've calculated all that. Eh? Still set on taking the risk.
Risk there is. Anyway. You have your own protection. That much I
can see."

"I spent two days with Richard/Rita, Gerald."

"All going well?" We both were avoiding the sharp-toothed
pronouns, he, she, his, her, and the like.

"As far as I can judge. Of course . . ." Since his exorcism,
Richard/ Rita had lived in an in-between land of his mind. There was
disquieting indefiniteness about him.

"Of course. I understand. But Richard/ Rita is at least clean."

"What would you say was the principal benefit to you from the
whole matter?"

"Before it all happened, I never knew what love was. Or what
masculine and feminine meant. Really did not. Besides, I got rid of
some deep pride in myself."

It was now getting chilly. I was happy to stroll with Gerald into the
house for dinner. We talked continuously. And, as we did, it became
clear to me yet again that, while true cases of Exorcism take their toll,
they are not simple horror tales for frightening readers and movie-
goers. For all that evening we were delving deeper not into horror, but
into the frame of love that makes it possible to expel horror. And the
case of Richard/ Rita was important beyond many another, exactly
because it centered on our ability to identify love, and on the dire risk
of confusing that love with what we can only see as its physical or even
chemical components.

It became clear that for Father Gerald the importance centered on
the same point. Richard/Rita had carried the confusion to ghastly
extremes. But for those who could corne to know and understand his
case, there is a lesson to be learned. I was trying to understand through

THE VIRGIxN AND THE GIRL-FIXER I79

Gerald and through his entire experience, so bizarre and violent, what
that gentle lesson was.

"Gerald, I want to get back later perhaps to what you meant by
'clean' — you used the term when speaking of Richard /Rita before
dinner. But just now, something else is on my mind." We were sitting
in his den after dinner. "Having read the transcript of the exorcism
and talked extensively with Richard /Rita, my questions to you center
around sexuality and love. For instance, why were you nicknamed the
'Virgin' in the seminary?" I had learned this from Gerald's friends.

"I was the only one who didn't know the nickname for half my
seminary days". As to their reason for it, it seems I gave the impression
of not knowing anything about sex."

"Did you?"

"Not really. I had seen diagrams and pictures, that sort of stuff. I
could distinguish a passionate kiss from a friendly or affectionate one
in the movies. But sex as such remained a hidden thing for me."

"But didn't you have the normal feelings about twelve or thirteen or
fourteen?"

"I don't know what you mean by 'normal.' I never had one of those
nocturnal ejaculations. Never yet had one. When I started to grow hair
on various places, it sort of wasn't there one day, and the next day it
was."

"Did you ever masturbate?"

"Never. Not that I wanted to. I didn't. Erections around the age of
puberty and later just were taken by me as happening to me. It sounds
funny" — he grinned boyishly — "but not as something about which I
had to do something. Embarrassing. But then my father took me for a
walk and gave me his set speech on sex which he gave to all my four
brothers. It always began with the affirmation: 'Look, Gerry, you have
a penis. And it is used for two things neither of which it does very
well: urinating and copulating.' All of us knew the speech by heart.
Then he explained clinically what copulation was."

I steered the conversation to the time just before Gerald had
entered the seminary: had he gone out with girls or dated them or
done anything more complicated than that? Apparently he used to
take the sisters of his school friends to see a movie now and then,
usually in a group. He went to some dances, but never really enjoyed
them. He avoided them whenever he could. He was embarrassed by
girls and by women in general.

He was on his feet now. "Let's take a turn in the garden. It will help

l80 THE CASES

oil the wheels." We went outside. It was already night. A few clouds
lazed across the stars. There was no moon. The garden was partially lit
by the lights from the house. As we walked down toward the tulip
beds we entered greater darkness. A few lights could be seen winking
on the distant mountainside. There was very little sound.

"Ever kiss a girl?"

"No. Not passionately. Never." He had been looking away while
talking. Now he glanced quizzically at me. "Why all the questions
about my sexual life?"

"This is my way — perhaps roundabout, but anyhow — this is my way
of finding out what you now understand about love and masculinity
and femininity, and what you learned in the exorcism on this score."

We stood for a short while taking in the calm of the night and the
distant lights. Then I began again.

"Let me put it like this, Gerald. I take it you entered adult
life — even your life as a priest — with very flimsy notions of what sex
was all about, and ..."

"There you go again," he interrupted good-humoredly. We traveled
a few paces in silence. "I suppose basically I was like that once —
minus the experience. I mean: of course, I realized about eighteen or
nineteen that there was a very powerful thing called sex. But" — he
stopped and looked out over the tulip beds — "it was always something
I knew about. In my mind. With concepts. In myself, I felt there was
this mighty urge. Never gave it any leeway. Once a girl tried to kiss me
on the lips. I was frightened by the — uh the — " He fumbled for the
right word but couldn't find it. "Look. Something told me if I let it go
inside in me, it would rule me." Then triumphantly and raising his
voice: "The rawness! That's it. The kiss felt raw."

"And dirty for you?"

"No. Lovely raw. But too lovely. Kind of tumultuously lovely. Only
I couldn't handle that tumult, I knew."

We turned around to stroll back toward the house. "Well, anyway,
Gerald, what difference did the exorcism make to all this?"

"I suppose the best way to say it is the simple way. R/R thought for
years that gender and sex were the same thing, for all practical
purposes. So did I, come to think of it. Don't know about you." We
were coming up to the house, and the light fell on his face. "You may
remember from the transcript. The crux of the Girl-Fixer's resistance
lay there. ["Girl-Fixer" was the given name of the evil spirit expelled
from Richard/ Rita.] And it took all that talk and pain to let me see it."

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER l8l

He stood facing the windows, his face and eyes bright and clear. "In
a nutshell, Malachi. As I now understand it since the exorcism, when
two people — a man and a woman — love each other, are making love, I
now understand they are reproducing God's love and God's life.
Sound's banal. And it sounds trite. Even sounds evasive and vague and
feathery. But that's it. Either that, or here you have two more or less
highly developed animals copulating — rutting, whatever you want to
call it — and the ending is just sweet sweat, a few illusions, perhaps,
and then a let's-get-back-to-normal-existence sort of thing. Do-or-die.
Now-or-never. Go bust in the effort. Anything you like. Could even
learn from kangaroos, if that were the way with it." He turned his
head in a comical way and said: "Ever see two kangaroos courting and
copulating? I did. In a documentary. Extraordinary. Extraordinary."
He shook his head.

"Well, apart from any practical significance that might have for you
now, Gerald, you being celibate and all that . . ."

"And with a few more months to live," he said gently but not testily,
as if to make quite clear he took into account the deadline of his life.

"Okay. Apart from that, maybe we'll get back to that subject. But
explain something to me. Isn't there an in-between stage? I mean: men
and women aren't just animals. But neither are they performing an act
of worship of God. Or are they? Is that what you're saying?"

"Aaaah! The good-and-natural-act business." He was mimicking
someone I did not know, probably some professor of his seminary days.
"Well." This last word was said with sardonic emphasis. "As I now
understand us men and women, we go through this world finding our
way through facts and facts and more facts. Mountains of facts. But no
matter what we do or get to know, all the time we are experiencing
spirit. God's spirit."

He looked across to the lights of the nearby town. "And sometimes
it's an experience in thoughts we think. Or it comes in words we hear.
More often, it's an experience by intuition. A direct 'looking-at.' Some
of those perceptions come like messages sent you. You hear children
laughing, or see a beautiful valley in the midday sun. But you're
mainly passive. At other times, you're doing something. And that's
better still. Like when you have compassion for someone, or forgive
someone."

We were down again at the tulip beds. He stopped at the middle
one, where he had been working earlier, and looked at the silent
flowers. They gleamed with wisps of color in the distant reflection of

l82 THE CASES

light from the house. "But in love and lovemaking, it's the highest.
Both are acting. Both taking. Both giving. Nobody's passive."

At this point I made an objection, saying I had no concept of how
men and women reproduce God's love and God's life when they love
each other. We might say that, perhaps, in a remote and metaphorical
way. But, then, the tulips do the same. And the kangaroos. All these,
including men and women, may not know they're reproducing God's
life and God's love, metaphorically. But they do. Or don't they? This
was my question.

He turned away from me and faced the mountain range. His voice
came in short murmurs, as if he were reading cue cards visible only to
him. "You remember the Girl-Fixer, and my struggle with it. You
remember?" The crux of that struggle between Gerald and the evil
spirit possessing Richard/ Rita had concerned the meaning of love and
of loving. "Well," he continued, "on the plateau of love — and I don't
mean the climax of an act of love only, but the plateau of love
itself — man and woman are both caught up in a dynamic of love. No
past. No standing still. No anticipation. No then, now, and next. Just
the black velvet across which all stars flash. No oblivion. All . . ."

"But, Gerald, God — where's God in all this? You started off talking
about God, as if the lovers were locked into an intuitive sharing of
Gods life."

He wheeled around and said almost fiercely: "That's God! That's
what God is like." He turned away again, as if looking for inspiration.
"God's no static and immutable quantum, as we understand those
words. That's the God in books. But — an eternal dynamic, always
becoming, without having begun, without going to an end. Becoming
without changing. No then. No now. No next." As he turned and
started to walk back toward the house, I fell into step with him.

"But there are two in our case. Man and woman."

"Ah," he said, tossing his head backward in a slight gesture, "that's
the condition we're in. And that's the price."

"The price?"

"Yes, the price. In order to have that participation in God's being,
the two must reproduce God's oneness. Must love. Truly love. You
can't fake it."

"But what part — if you can speak like that — of God does a man
reproduce and what part does a woman reproduce?"

"None. By himself and by herself. Or in himself or in herself. None.
Nothing that is physical. Only in love and loving."

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 183

''Well, in love and in loving, what do they reproduce?" We stopped
halfway up the garden. Gerald was looking at me steadily, as if
searching for something. After a moment, he drew in a deep breath
and said softly: "As far as I know, God is beautiful, is beauty itself.
Beauty in being. Being that is beauty. And God's will is in full
possession of that beauty, that being. In human love, woman loving is
that being's echo; and man desiring is that will's parallel. In their love,
will is locked with being. They simply reproduce, know, participate in
God's life and love, in God's self some way or other. Otherwise, let's
go back to those kangaroos — or chimpanzees."

"Weil, even granting all that," I said to him as we started to walk
again, "tell me, what does masculine and feminine mean for you now,
in the light of all that?"

"Remember Richard/Rita's crux?" He looked at me, knowing I did.

This had been the center of the Pretense in the exorcism.
Richard /Rita had presumed the ultimate source of masculinity and
femininity was the same as that of sexuality — the body, the chemistry
of the body.

"And none of Richard/ Rita's most extreme efforts, even the
operation, worked for him. He wasn't basically androgynous. No one
is, for that matter. We're basically and immutably masculine or
feminine. Nature may goof and give us the wrong genitals for our
gender. No matter. Apart from a mutant form of that kind, our sexual
apparatus corresponds to what we are — feminine or masculine.
Androgyny is baloney."

I laughed at the rhyme and the slang. But I had a real difficulty.
According to Gerald the feminine — femininity — corresponded to
God's being; the masculine or masculinity, to God's will. The essence
of God, in our human way of thinking, would be feminine in that case.
"If you are correct, Gerald, God, to speak in human terms, is feminine
rather than masculine."

"Of course. More powerful. Creative. In her own being, the
ultimate theater — not the object — of human longing."

"What about the He's and the Him's and the His's of the Bible? And
Israel like a woman God loves and woos? And all that?"

"Just a good dosage of Semitic chauvinism. Plus a lot of ignorance.
And a good deal more of all men's chauvinism down the ages. Men
have been in charge from the beginning. Even in Buddhism. Just
because the Buddha was a man."

"So, feminine is something of the spirit essentially?"

184 THE CASES

"Only of the spirit."

"And masculine also?"

"Right. A bird doesn't fly because it has wings. It has wings because
it flies. A man isn't masculine because he has a penis and scrotum, nor
a woman feminine because she has vagina and womb and estrogen or
whatever. They have all that — if they have it — because she's feminine
and he's masculine. Even if they lack some or all of those things, they
are still masculine and feminine."

We were back on the patio. Gerald was about to open the door, and
I should have left it at that. It was already late. I had to travel back to
the town and catch a bus to the airport. Gerald, under doctor's orders,
should have been in bed over an hour ago. But chiefly, if I had not
gone on talking and probing, I would not have had, as a consequence
of my probing, to bear an almost intolerable pain on Gerald's account.
I went on unknowingly: "Gerald, tell me one more thing before I leave
you in peace. With all that we have said in mind, do you now regret
that you never fell in love or that you never made love and never will
make love with a woman?"

As always when you make a mistake, you begin to sense it vaguely
and go on in desperation trying to remedy the situation.

"I know you don't regret your priesthood. I know your vow of
celibacy is dear to you. But, all that aside for one moment, have you
regrets?" Gerald let go of the door handle gently. His head bowed as
he dropped his eyes. I could no longer catch his expression. The
sudden silence between us was not merely an absence of words. It was
the abrupt severance of all communication. I felt perspiration on my
forehead.

He stood for a moment in the patio light, looking thin, askew, frail,
as if a great weight had been laid on him. I noticed age lines and a
gauntness that had escaped me earlier. His face was immobile, but the
"Jesus patch" was now of a deeper color. Then he stepped slowly onto
the grass, limping, and started to walk with short steps down toward
the tulips. I followed and started to say something, but he silenced me
with a small, slow gesture of his right hand. A couple of yards from the
flower beds he slowed to a stop. I did not dare look at him, and at first
I heard no sound from him. But I knew r he was crying. Then, as the
minutes passed, I realized that this was not a sobbing or a voiced
crying. He was not shaking, but very quiet and still. His tears were
flowing steadily, ground out of him by some deep sorrow long ago
accepted and whose pain he knew intimately. Merely, on this

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 185

occasion, I had evoked that pain and its sorrow beyond his control. I
knew he had to finish it in his own way. Nothing could console him
and stop those tears. Seneca said once: "When a man cries, either he
cries on his own mother's shoulder, or he cries alone." Gerald was
alone.

It lasted several minutes. Then putting both hands to his eyes and
wiping them, he said simply: "I know you understand the meaning of
these." His voice was strangely deep and very unlike the tones he had
used all evening. Then it had come from someone alive and vibrant in
his own way, walking and talking near me. Now it came from very far
away; deep, grave, solemn, he was speaking clearly to me from
another terrain where he alone had walked, where his fate had been
decided, and where the very self of him had never ceased to be ever
since. It was an exorcist speaking from the lonely world he must
always inhabit, alone with his grisly knowledge, his bruised memories,
and his blind trust locked desperately on to all-powerful love for a final
cleansing.

"Don't be sorry, Malachi. No reproaches. It's just that no one should
have to put up with this in another. These are tears to be shed in
solitude." He straightened up and cleared his throat. I could see him
take in the whole horizon, turning his head slowly and meditatively
from side to side. "Somewhere in my world," he said out loud, but as if
speaking to himself, "somewhere, at some time during the years I have
spent in it, there must have been or even now must be someone, some
woman with whom love would have been possible. I shall never see
her eyes or hear her voice or feel the touch of her fingers. I could have
tasted God's eternity and ecstasy with her. And I could have seen
God's comeliness on her hair and on her breasts. Somewhere.
Someone. But I never shall. Not now. Not ever. I shall never share in
her mystery of God's self-contained glory.

"And you know well, I am not crying because of missed opportunity
or frustration. So help me." He wiped his eyes again. "In one way, I
don't know why I am crying. And, at the same time, I do know very
well. Once you finger the innards of a situation such as R/R was in, 1
think the terrible fragility of human love becomes more beautiful and
you are frightened for its safety. Poor R/R and his delicate dreams! He
really, genuinely yearned to be feminine and to love as only woman
can."

He turned and faced toward the house. His eyes were still wet and
glistening, but washed bright: "Is that why lovers sometimes cry tears

l86 THE CASES

at their happiest moments?" Apparently, at that moment, the tears
started to flow again, because he looked away quickly toward the
mountains.

"Many a woman and many a man must have had R/R's same
beautiful dream," he said through the pain, "saw it within finger's
touch, reached for it, and found it blighted before they held it." A
pause. "I don't know why I cry for them. Feeling for them, perhaps.
For only Jesus can mend the fracture of their spirit."

I waited until he seemed to have stopped crying. There was one last
question I wanted to ask him, about Jesus. But he spoke before I did:
"Of course, I have regrets. I would be a liar if I said otherwise. The
regrets I have are for the intuitions I never had. Any man or woman
I've ever known who really loved, all told me that in really loving, the
physical was a couch or bed for a flight of intuitions. He no longer felt
himself merely in her or near her. She no longer felt herself merely
around him or near him. It went beyond that into — what's this one
woman said? — uh — an 'allness' she said. Or, as one man said to me,
'full togetherness.' He meant: with himself, with his wife, with God,
with earth, with life."

I asked Gerald if, mingled in his knowledge and his partial regrets,
he thought of the loss of children he might have had. He replied that
his having or not having children was something else again. I pursued
the point, however, suggesting that perhaps one lament of deep pathos
and suffering for him in Richard/Rita's case was Richard/Rita's total
inability to have children. No matter how much love Richard /Rita
dreamed of and achieved, it could never be a life-giving love. His
would always be a crippled dream.

Gerald reminded me of what Richard /Rita kept screaming at the
end of the exorcism as he thrashed back and forth. He had screamed
again and again: "Life and love! Love and life! Life and love!" until
they covered his mouth with masking tape. "Now," concluded Gerald,
"like Richard /Rita, I will have to wait until I cross over to the other
side, in order to find life from love and love from life. At present, I am
time's eunuch for life and love in eternity." With the last sentence the
timbre of his voice had subtly changed.

He now sounded more or less like the Gerald who had entertained
me earlier that evening. We started walking back to the house. As we
passed out through the hall and front door, he quoted Jesus: " Tn the
Kingdom of Heaven, they neither give their daughters in marriage nor

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 187

are given in marriage.' No marriage there," he commented musingly.
"No need for it."

"Gerald, about Jesus."

He broke in on me. "He was — is — God. No woman, no human
lovemaking was needed to enrich him."

"Can we make love then, do we make love, because we are merely
human?"

"Only because we are human. Once possessed of God and possessed
by God, there's no point in making love. You have all that human love
can give you and much more. Love itself."

Nobody who had seen Gerald starting off life as a young priest
would have guessed he would end as an exorcist condemned to an
early death. Born in Parma, Ohio, reared in Dijon, France, until he
was fourteen years old, educated from that time in Cleveland,
ordained priest in 1948, Gerald was sent as an assistant to an outlying
parish of Chicago.

There and in other parishes Gerald served as an assistant for 23
uneventful years. During that time he acquired a reputation for solid
common sense. He was unflappable even in the most trying circum-
stances. Sometimes he was criticized for being a little too unworldly —
"Not very worldly-wise," a colleague would remark now and then.
But, whenever a crisis arose, Gerald's judgments and decisions
generally proved to be the right ones.

One day he was called by the pastor of a neighboring parish and
asked to go there for a consultation. When he arrived at the priest's
house, he was told the story of a young man, Richard O., an employee
of an insurance company, who had recently come to live in the
neighborhood. He was not Roman Catholic, but his two brothers and
some close friends of his had gone spontaneously to the old priest for
help and counsel. Their brother and friend, Richard, had been
deteriorating for some time now. They had tried doctors and
psychologists. Then Richard had been persuaded to visit a Lutheran
minister. After that, a rabbi had prayed over him. But the deteriora-
tion still continued.

Richard's brothers were quite frank when they talked to the two
priests in the parlor of the rectory. They gave a brief sketch of
Richard /Rita's life up to that moment. "Father, we are not Catholics.
We don't believe in the Catholic Church, or in any church, for that

l88 THE CASES

matter. But we will do anything, anything at all, go to any length, in
order to help our brother." The old priest excused himself and Gerald
for a moment. They went outside.

The pastor had several questions for Gerald. Did he think Richard
O. was a case of possession? Gerald did not know; he had never come
across such a case. Shouldn't they alert the bishop? Gerald had already
chatted with "young Billy" (the bishop's nickname among his priests).
There was no official diocesan exorcist. The bishop knew nothing
about it, and he wanted to know less. "Let's take it step by step from
the top downward," counseled Gerald cheerfully.

They returned to the parlor and asked the two brothers for Richard
O.'s medical and psychological reports. They could have them
immediately, Gerald was assured. Gerald asked if Richard knew of the
brothers' visit to see the pastor and himself. Bert said he did not think
so.

4 'He may," Gerald rejoined. And then he went on to explain that, if
Richard were really possessed by an evil spirit, he could easily know
much more than his brothers told him.

This conversation took place three days after Christmas. The reports
arrived early in the New Year. With the permission of his own pastor,
Gerald went to live temporarily in the rectory of his old friend in order
to be near Richard O. At the beginning of February, having digested
the reports and spoken to the doctors and psychologists, he accompa-
nied Richard's two brothers on a first visit to Richard.

Richard /Rita received them quite pleasantly in his house. That day
he seemed inordinately happy. He spoke to them about himself and
made no bones about his condition. He said that sometimes, as at that
moment, he saw things clearly and knew he needed some kind of help.
At other times, from what people told him, he went all funny. It was a
constant change in him. And it was too painful and abrupt and
unpredictable for him to carry on like that much longer. "Help me if
you can," he added. "Even if later I tell you to go to Hell, help me. I'll
sign any documents necessary."

Willingly, Richard/ Rita said in answer to Gerald's proposal, he
would go to Chicago and undergo tests by doctors and psychologists of
Gerald's choosing. The following day they went to Chicago together.
By some happy circumstance the visit there and the tests conducted
by the psychologists and doctors went off without incident. Richard/
Rita had no lapse into his sudden fits.

While they were in Chicago, Gerald and the old priest went to see

THE VIRGIN AxND THE GIRL-FIXER l8g

the only exorcist they could track down within reaching distance. He
was a Dominican friar, an ex-missionary, who lived in retirement in a
Chicago suburb. He smiled grimly as they told him their story.

"Better you than me, boys," he said quietly. "Let me put you
through the rite of Exorcism and give you a few tips of my own for
yourself and the assistants. I learned a thing or two in Korea. It wasn't
all wasted."

The old man inculcated the first principles of Exorcism. He warned
Gerald not to try to take the place of Jesus. It was only by the name
and power of Jesus, he emphasized, that any evil spirit could be
exorcised. He schooled him in the various traps that awaited the
unwary: the dangers of any logical argument with the possessing spirit;
the need of strong, silent assistants; and the customary procedure of an
exorcism.

Gerald had to return several times to Chicago with Richard /Rita
after the first occasion. He went by himself to see some theologians in
order to get a more accurate knowledge of what went on during an
exorcism. Richard/ Pita himself had to make several trips in connec-
tion with his office work. All in all, it was the beginning of March
before everything was in readiness. Gerald felt that he had taken all
possible precautions. Intrigued as all the medical and psychiatric
examiners were with Richard/ Rita's history and transsexual operation,
they had satisfied themselves that Richard/Rita was medically and
psychologically as normal as any other person, and that he was not
indulging in any strange fun and games in order to attract attention.
This had been suggested by one of the psychologists. The rite of
Exorcism, Gerald decided, would do no harm.

For the actual exorcism, he had chosen five assistants. Richard/
Rita's two brothers, Bert and Jasper, had volunteered for the job. The
old pastor had secured the services of the local police captain and of
an English teacher from the parish school. Richard's landlord, Michael
S., a Greek-American, a good friend of the old pastor, had been told of
the exorcism and spontaneously offered himself. Gerald chose as his
own priest assistant a young man recently posted to his parish, a
Father John.

Only once or twice in the last month before the exorcism was
Gerald's courage shaken. At one moment, the old Dominican friar took
him aside as he and the pastor were leaving him after one of their
visits. He asked Gerald if he was a virgin. He was, replied Gerald, but
what difference could that make? The Dominican answered him rather

igO THE CASES

offhandedly, trying to play down the import of his question. It made
no difference, he said. It was just that Gerald would have more to
suffer. At least, that is what he thought.

Questioned closely by Gerald as to why he thought so, the
Dominican looked at him for a moment; then he said in a still voice:
"You haven't paid your dues. You don't really know what's in you.
But" — he wandered over to the door and opened it — "They do.
Now" — motioning to where the old pastor was waiting for Gerald —
"your friend is waiting. Go in peace. And don't be afraid. This is your
lot." As Gerald and his old friend drove back home, they chatted
about the whole matter. It was clear to him, the pastor said, that when
one spent years in a certain type of job — the pastor in his parish, the
old friar in his missionary work — you got a special sense. You can't
share it with anyone. You don't want to, really. And what it tells you
isn't always pleasant. Sometimes you see dark, abiding presences
where others see nothing but light. "It's all very funny," the pastor
remarked to Gerald, who had fallen silent and thoughtful. "Don't try
to understand. You can't get old before your time. It would tear the
heart out of you."

The nearer the mid-March date of the exorcism came, the more
unreal it all seemed to the participants, especially to Gerald. This was
chiefly because of Richard/Rita. There was in those last days no sign
of deterioration in him, no fits. All was calm and normal. He even
received them all in his house the night before the appointed day and
served them a dinner he had cooked himself. Afterward, he helped
them arrange the room where the exorcism would be done and chatted
amicably with them before they left. Gerald had brought the
paraphernalia of Exorcism with him — crucifix, stole, surplice, ritual
book, holy-water flask. On the suggestion of the old Dominican, a
stretcher had been borrowed from a local clinic; they might need it for
Richard/Rita.

All were to assemble at 8:00 a.m. the following morning. For Gerald
there were some swift seconds with an awry note. He was the last
down the pathway out to the road where he had parked his car. As he
turned back to close the latch on the gate, he saw Richard /Rita
silhouetted in the main doorway of his little house. Gerald could not at
that distance read the look in Richard/Rita's eyes, but Richard /Rita's
hands caught his attention.

When the pastor and Gerald had left him at the door, Gerald
remembered clearly, Richard /Rita's right hand, with open palm

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 1Q1

toward them, had been raised slightly in a goodbye gesture. The left
had been resting on the doorknob. But now, as he looked back at
Richard /Rita, the right hand was splayed out like a claw pointing
toward him. The left, palm turned up, fingers slightly curled, was held
stiffly. Gerald felt a shudder in his spine.

"Come on, Gerald! Someone walking on your grave, I suppose?" It
was the old pastor pulling his leg good-humoredly. Richard /Rita
waved to them again and went inside.

RICHARD/RITA

The story of Richard O. is only in part, but nonetheless importantly,
the story of a transsexual. He was born physically a male, but with an
ineradicable desire to be a woman. In his childhood his ideas and
wishes were nebulous. In adulthood he firmly believed that each one
of us can be male or female, masculine or feminine; that each one has
an almost equal dosage of maleness and femaleness, of masculinity and
femininity, before culture and civilization and social environment, as
the persuasion goes, make little boys little boys and little girls little
girls. He finally underwent the transsexualization operation — success-
fully, in medical terms. He then took the name Rita.

Richard had a very clear and very early understanding of the
difference between femininity and masculinity, and he was attracted
by the seeming mystery of the feminine and repelled by the
inadequacy of being restricted only to the masculine. From the age of
sixteen on, Richard's aim was to let the feminine in him emerge, so
that he could supplement his masculine inadequacy with the self-
sufficient mystery of femininity.

From sixteen to twenty-five he actively sought, in full confidence
and trust, to think, feel, and act "androgynously"; he was persuaded
that he could have the union of feminine and masculine in himself. But
the result was a great aloneness (not, at that stage, loneliness) with
none of that desired union. At twenty-five he sought in marriage the
same union. It did not work; he found neither the unity nor the union
of love; and the androgynous persuasion in him withered.

From his divorce at age twenty-nine, through his transsexualizing
operation at age thirty-one, up to his exorcism at age thirty-three, he
developed into a "watcher on the sidelines," jealous of the supremacy
of the feminine, fascinated by the essential function of the masculine.

192 THE CASES

The mystery of femininity became something to unshroud; in Rich-
ard's case his unshrouding of it amounted to blasphemy and a type of
physicomoral degradation which haunts him today. The vitality of the
masculine became a weapon for him; he saw it as a means of death.

By the end of the summer 1971, he had voluntarily become
possessed by an evil spirit which responded to the name of "Girl-
Fixer." This possession had started many years previously. His violent
revolt against possession ended finally in his undergoing the Exorcism
rite performed by Father Gerald. But, until after his exorcism, Richard
saw his problem as one of chemical substance, of brain modification, or
of cultural adaptation, never as a dilemma of his spirit.

The exorcism was successful. He was freed. But Richard/ Rita ended
up, as he is today, in an unenviable position: neither male nor female;
not a sexual neuter, but, nevertheless, in a no-man's-land between
masculine and feminine.

Not all the details of his life are pertinent for understanding what
happened to him. We need only a relatively few scenes and details of
childhood and early teenage. It is the triple stage he passed through as
an adult which illustrates to some degree his condition at the time of
exorcism.

Richard/ Rita presents in vivid outline the classical puzzle of all
possessed people who, though possessed (always to some extent with
their consent), still at some point revolt against that very possession.
And why should Richard /Rita, and not any of the other transsexuals
known to many of us in ordinary life, have been thus possessed in the
first place?

Richard/Rita was born Richard O. in Detroit, Michigan, the third in
a family of six children (three boys, three girls). The family lived in a
semidetached two-story frame house which stood in a suburban area,
predominantly white and upper-income bracket. His mother was
Lutheran, his father, Jewish; the children were baptized as Lutherans;
but religion did not play a prominent role in the family life. His
mother's Lutheranism was as unimportant to her as Jewishness was
unimportant to his father. It was a family in easy financial circum-
stances, governed with a light hand, and no more or no less
self-consciously united than any other on the street.

Richard's father worked a regular nine-to-five day in an insurance
office, spent most of his free time with the boys. He was a boating and
open-air enthusiast, and went fishing and shooting in Canada during

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 193

summer vacations. First, the two elder boys, Bert and Jasper, and then,
when he passed his ninth year, Richard participated in these vacations.

An ideal held more or less unconsciously by each of the boys was to
be like their father — strong, athletic, outdoor. To be a man. Richard's
first memories of this ideal include a day in December when he was in
the park with his father walking Flinny, the family dog. He was
throwing a ball for the dog to retrieve. As the dog leaped, twisted,
caught the ball, and returned running to them, his father remarked
that that was how Richard must be — taut, ready to jump and run and
catch. The movements of the dogs body became a rhythm of ideal
supremacy and independent strength for Richard: leaping, thrusting,
and striving as a well-knit frame in an armor of self-reliance and
resilience that absorbed bumps, knocks, cold, heat, swift changes in
direction, and sudden bursts of energy. "Look how Flinny throws
himself into it all!" he remembers his father's cry of admiration and
encouragement.

The discordant note in this recollection arises in Richard's memory
of what happened when they returned home. When he saw his mother
and his sisters, he felt a struggle in himself; and without understanding
why, he was comparing their movements and the sound of their voices
with those of his father and of Flinny. But the incident passed as a
shadow.

The three boys were tall and dark in coloring. The girls were small,
narrow-waisted, and blonde, like their mother. A family trait shared by
all six children with their mother was the uneven earlobe: the right
earlobe was noticeably smaller than the left one.

The girls gravitated, in younger years, to their mother, who never
lost a certain apparent dourness, even in her smile and affection. But
she had, as well, a hilarious sense of humor sprinkled with irony.

Each child was sent to kindergarten, then public school, and
afterward to college. In their world there was no hint of the social
developments which were to mark the 1960s and 1970s. Coast-to-coast
television was just on the drawing boards. Female liberation was
unborn. Later trends such as unisex and bisexuality were hidden.
Homosexuality was still in the closet. Sexual permissiveness and the
wholesale dilution of the family as a unit were unknown. The young
had not yet been seized by the radicalizing passions of 20 years later.
They had not yet started that quick and hazardous trek from infancy
into immediate adulthood without any childhood and youth in the
traditional sense of those words. Little boys were still little boys, and

194 THE CASES

little girls were still little girls. Nobody had voiced any doubt about
that.

It was Richard himself who felt the first doubts. The first time a
change made itself felt in him always remained clear in his memory.
One afternoon in the late 1940s, when Richard O. was almost nine
years old, he had the first remote intimations of another world utterly
different from the one to which he was accustomed.

Until his summer vacation that year on a small farm belonging to his
mother's brother, some 40 miles outside St. Joseph, Missouri, Richard
had never known a day not spent in the asphalt streets, among the city
buildings, on the cement pavements, accompanied by the continuous
hum of traffic, in Detroit, Michigan. He had never seen geese, turkeys,
or chickens. Black walnuts, hickory trees, hazelnuts, sweet corn,
pumpkins, rabbits, alfalfa hay, timothy, wild ducks, all the common-
place elements of a farm were novelties that crowded his mind and
sensations for the first time. It was, above all, the immensities of the
place that seemed to awe him — the clear sky, the Missouri River, the
unblocked view of huge stretches of land.

The incident took place three days before he returned to Detroit. It
was about five o'clock in the afternoon. He had spent most of the day
on the tractor with his uncle sowing soybeans. Now there remained
one more field to be done. It was a long field with a sloping hump
running at an angle across its middle. On one of the field's long sides
there was a small pond. On the other side there was the thinning edge
of a wood which stretched back for about half a mile. It was Richard's
turn to rest. He lay down among the trees at the edge of the wood and
watched as his uncle drove the tractor in long swatches over the
central hump from one end of the field to the other.

These were the last hours of what had been a bright and cloudless
day. Across the field and beyond the pond to the west, Richard's eyes
could see the sun setting slowly over the Kansas bluffs. His eyes
followed lazily the light of the sun already beginning to slant over the
bluffs, down across the 20 or so miles of fields and woods that bordered
the Missouri, then across the river and back to the black-brown stretch
of the field. He listened to the meadow larks singing on the edge of the
pond. High up in the sky, balancing against the wind from the
southwest, a bird hovered. Two sounds, both with their own peculiar
rhythm, filled his ears. The noise of the tractor, at first mechanical and
clashing, became a lovely thing for him. It rose as his uncle passed by
where he lay, then sank again as the tractor climbed the hump, went

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 1C)5

out of sight on the other side. Then it started to rise again as the
tractor climbed the far side of the hump, came into view, and roiled
down past him and on to the far right, where it turned and came back
to cut another long furrow.

The other sound was the light evening wind in the elms and maples
around him. At first he did not notice it. Then it thrust itself on his
consciousness as a rising and falling series of lightly breathed notes.
When he lay on his side and looked up, he could see nothing but the
gently moving foliage of the trees and the blue sky as a dappled
pavement beyond them.

Almost with no break in his own sensations, he became peculiarly
aware of his own body as it lay on the moss and ferns at the edge of the
wood. The smell of wild honeysuckle and late May apple flowers
mingled with the sharp freshness of some elm leaves he had been
twisting and shredding in his hands. He became aware that insects,
innumerable to judge from the noise, were droning and buzzing
somewhere above his head among the leaves and branches. Everything
seemed warm and living; and his body and feelings now appeared to
him as part of, not separate from, some throbbing whole, mysterious
with its own hidden voices and its shrouded secrets.

He twisted flat on his back, looking up at the waving leaves,
translucent with sunshine, and watching the birds flitting from branch
to branch, chattering and fighting and picking. He could hear faintly in
the distance an occasional bobwhite calling out its two notes. A
squirrel ran into his view now and then as it scurried from tree trunk
to branch. All his muscles and sinews were relaxed. There was no
tension. He was sharing through body and mind in some unperturbed
softness and wholeness, but not an immobile or silent wholeness. All
and everything was moving, doing, becoming. And, as he now
remembers it, instinctively he listened to the wind in the trees as a
voice, as voices, as a message of this great, whole softness. The rising
and falling ring of the tractor became a background music. He felt
unaccountable tears in his eyes and an ache that gave him peculiar
pleasure somewhere deep in him.

Years later and in much more critical circumstances, he would
admit to himself that those sounds and sensations, particularly the
wind, had been the vehicle of some news, some information. It
seemed, in retrospect, as if he had been told something and later
remembered the secret meaning of the message, but could not recall
the words used or the tone and identity of the messenger.

ig6 THE CASES

The tractor finally drew up beside him, his uncle climbed down, and
they both walked slowly back to the house.

Richard had two more days on the farm before returning home to
Detroit. He spent them wandering in the vegetable garden, lying in
the woods, or sitting on the edge of the pond. He was trying to
recapture that magic moment of the previous evening. But he found
only silence. He was, as he put it later, encased again in the hard shell
of his body.

His uncle and aunt took his behavior as a sign of unhappiness
because he would be leaving soon for Detroit. And when he cried as
they turned out of the driveway onto the main road which led them to
St. Joseph and his train, they took his sadness as a compliment to
them: their nephew wanted to stay. The vacation had been a success.
"I will come back. I will come back," Richard remembers saying to
nobody in particular. "Please, let me come back."

On his return home, his suntan, the acquired strength of his arms,
his healthy complexion, his new and detailed knowledge of farm and
country delighted his family. His father was proud: "Now, Richard,
you're becoming a real man!"

But it was his mother and sisters who caught Richard's attention.
When they talked or laughed or moved, he had feelings indefinably
similar to those moments on the edge of the wood. Sisters and mother
seemed to carry some detailed mystery, some wholeness, to be supple
and malleable. His father and brothers — quick in their movements,
deliberate in gestures, assured in their walk, purposeful in whatever
they did — seemed to Richard to be wrapped in hard shells. They
repelled him. And, at the same time, he felt ashamed at being repelled
by what should be his ideal. The voices of his father and brothers had
no overtones for him, no wisps of meaning, no subtle resonances.

Although he could not analyze all this at that time, he felt it. Of
course, he could not mention it or discuss it with anyone there. All he
could do, he did. As if speaking to the wind and the trees and the
colors and the birds of the farm, he thought (perhaps felt is the better
expression): "I don't want to leave you. I want to be as you." At that
age and for quite some time afterward, he did not know exactly who
that "you" was.

Daily life at home and at school closed in around him. In athletics
he was as good as the next boy. He always got good grades. After his
twelfth year, he became an avid reader. At home and in school he was
known as a normal boy, more studious than outdoor, not overly gentle,

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER I97

not exceptionally shy, not in any way a "sissy" or a weakling, one who
easily joined in groups and teams, and exceptionally affectionate and
warm as an individual.

Nothing ever obliterated his memory of the farm incident, but he
never returned to St. Joseph. Subsequent vacations were spent with his
father and brothers in Canada. And it was only toward the end of his
seventeenth year that another incident occurred which again effected
a profound change in Richard.

He had joined a group of his own classmates who, under the
supervision of an ex-forest ranger named Captain Nicholas, were to
spend three weeks camping out in Colorado. The purpose of the
vacation was to learn some of the arts of survival in the wilderness.
Their schedule was a full and very active one. When it was over, they
would know something about mountain climbing, swimming, life
saving, gathering food, making fires, cooking, trapping, scaling trees,
first aid, and seemingly anything else that Captain Nicholas could
manage to teach them in those few weeks. When the vacation was
finished, the eight had been invited to spend a last evening in the
ranch house belonging to Captain Nicholas and his family.

As part of survival training, each boy was to spend one night alone
at some distance from the base camp. When Richard's turn for a night
"out there alone" came around, he was instructed to spend it in a
small clearing on a hillside overlooking a lake about a mile from the
camp. He was given a whistle and told to signal in case he needed
help. According to camp rules, the other boys and the forest ranger
left him at nightfall.

As their footsteps and shouts died away, Richard turned around to
gather some brushwood for his fire. He was facing the lake about 150
feet above its surface. It was ringed around with mountains covered
with forests. The moon had already appeared full-faced over the rim of
the mountainside and cast a sheen of light on the water below and on
the silhouettes of the trees around him. The smell of resin was an
abiding atmosphere in which he felt as a welcomed stranger. He was
aware of very little sound except for the wind shaking the pine trees
and skimming the water's surface with light ripples. The air was still
warm, with a little chill just creeping into it.

He stood for a moment to take his bearings so he would not get lost
as he gathered his firewood. But the hush all around him seemed in a
sudden instant to have opened. An invisible veil fell aside, and he was
no longer a separate and distinct being from it all.

ig8 THE CASES

His first reaction was fear and he groped for his whistle. The rule
was: any sense of fear or apprehension must be signaled to the base
camp by one long and one short whistle. No stigma was attached to
this. It was part of the training program to recognize and respect such
feelings.

That first reaction, however, was almost immediately lost in a
deeper sensation. Richard will swear today it was the same as if the
night with its light, its weaving voice in the pine trees, its smells, and
its seeming stillness was remonstrating with him and saying: "I am
only secret. Not threat. I don't hurt. I reveal. Do not repel me."

He dropped the whistle from his mouth and sat down on the slope,
overwhelmed with one idea that kept drumming quietly at him in
words that sounded like his own: "I have yielded. I am going against
my training. But I want ... I have yielded . . . against my
training . . ." About this time he felt surrounded by shapes and
presences which had lain hidden or dormant up to this point. He was
sure they were there, although he could not see them. Fear was gone.
Only perplexity remained. The wind in the pines and the light on the
water were part and parcel of those presences. But there was
something else he could not recognize, could only accept or struggle to
reject. Something spoke in the wind and shone in the light. All
together, these mysterious things wove a web around his perplexity,
washing it in a strange grace and, at the same time, softening some
part inside him, some part of him that was supposed to be hard and
insoluble, but that now was becoming soft, supple, diffuse, flowing into
some mystery. He remembers murmuring again and again: "I have
yielded ... I want to . . . against my training . . ."

Then, even in the darkness, he began to notice details: the variant
colors of rocks around him, different kinds of ruffles on the water,
various shades to the trees, successive notes in the wind. And, in
flashes of memory, was back in the past: on the edge of the woods in
St. Joseph, listening to his sisters and his mother chatter and talk,
watching his father dancing with his mother at a family celebration the
previous winter, holding the hand of a high-school girlfriend as they
walked home from the cinema.

And, as that deep core of him melted, he heard his father's voice in
a frequent phrase used to his sons, "Chin up, young man!" dying away
into repulsive jumble, "We men must be strong. Chin up chin up
young man chin man strong chin up man . . ."

He felt his body shudder as if shaking off scales or armor. It did not

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 1QQ

go limp or cling to the ground. Rather, it was now a supple
continuation of ground, light, the voice of the wind, the silver of the
moon, the silence. His body seemed to hold the possibility of all
natural things at once. He knew it was incredible. There was one last,
clutching moment when something in him warned with a sharp voice.

But, after an instant's inner pause, he appeared to himself to let go,
willingly to accept, and to do so in almost poetic language: "I don't
know you. I want what you are. I want to be in that mystery. I don't
want a man's hardness and strength. I want your wholeness." He
actually spoke the words. They tumbled out half-whispered, incredu-
lous — for his brain kept telling him he was alone at night on the
mountainside. But something more powerful, not in his brain, kept
enticing him. He responded: "I want to be a woman . . . yes . . . man
woman." He did not know the sense of what he was saying, but he
kept saying it. And everything that night responded to him in
turn — infallibly, it seemed to him — and said: "You will be. You can be.
You will be. Secret. Strong. Mystery. Open. You will be. You can be.
Woman. Man. Soft. Hard. All. You will be. You can be."

He lost track of time. He lit no fire. He did not budge from where he
sat. The moon rose and set. The wind waxed and waned. There were
occasional cries from night owls, and once or twice the scream of a
bird surprised by some night killer. Richard's memory recorded all this
indirectly. Filling those hours was something else: the voice or the
sensation of a voice which soared and sank in a melody of notes.

Richard now underlines two things in his memory of that song. It
had no particular rhythm, no detectable beat. It seemed to be fully
and completely, but only, melody. More significantly, it told him
nothing new or shocking or awesomely strange — he seemed to himself
to have had all its notes already recorded in him; but now they were
evoked as echoes to the melody. And, as they resonated, they
delineated a quality or condition in which he always was but had
never realized, much less ever expressed it in his taste, walk, glance, in
the corners of his words where meaning's shadow hid, or even in his
perception of the world around him.

But no longer now was knowledge a thrust outward to grasp an
objective, to obtain an exact pinpointing with the lens of logic — "fixing
the cross-hairs on it," as his shooting-enthusiast father used to put it. In
that melodized condition, all objectives were received within a
delicate maze of sensibilities, emotions, reactions, intuitions. And, over
all, a sense of sacrament, of pact with what made water and earth and

200 THE CASES

air simultaneously strong and tender, soft and unyielding, masculine
and feminine. For this sense of the possibilities of all natural things at
once, in one condition, was an inner persuasion now. And he felt a
light-footed, almost unstable touching on all things, with strength that
was gentle, with firmness but no pride, with definitive choice but no
violence.

On and on that melody went throughout the night, until at sunrise
his classmates and Captain Nicholas found him sitting on the slope,
fresh-faced, smiling, a little dreamy, but fully awake.

Only Captain Nicholas noticed the change in Richard: the peculiar
haze at the back of his eyes and the way he turned his head to greet
them as they approached him. After the first bantering, as they were
all clambering down the slope toward the camp for breakfast, the
captain drew abreast of Richard and said: "You okay, kid?" When
Richard turned his head to the ranger, the haze Captain Nicholas had
caught in his eyes before was gone, just as if Richard had pulled veils
down closing off his inner state. His answer was normal: "I had a ball.
Did I do okay?"

A week later the vacation was over. The entire party left the
mountains in the late afternoon, climbed down the slopes, and walked
to the forest ranger's wayside post where they had left their station
wagon. After an hour's ride, they arrived at the ranch house, where
Captain Nicholas' wife and daughter, Moira, greeted them. They were
all tired; and after dinner all went to bed.

Richard, however, did not sleep very much. From the moment he
met Moira, he had a renewal of his recent experience on the
mountainside.

Fresh from that experience and still full of the pact he had made
with the air and the water and the earth — the ecstasy of it all was
quite vividly present to him for weeks after — Moira seemed to Richard
to be a walking, breathing embodiment of a secret figure he carried in
his memory. She seemed an answer to his prayer uttered on the
mountainside, and the model he had felt promised him in the shadow
of that slope. He saw the unconscious gravity of her head, the light
strength of her figure as the light strength of that figure he had felt
beside him on the mountainside that memorable night; the gentle
swaying of her walk as an expression of its freedom. And all the details
of her appearance and person were a revelation of what he desired to
have most: the husky tones of her voice together with the natural
grace of her hand movements, the sense of privileged look her eyes

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 201

carried, at least for him, and the soft bed of feeling that he knew
cushioned her laughter and made it utterly different from the loud
laughter of his companions.

Some of the other boys had noticed his fascinated look on the
evening of their arrival at the ranch, and he became the immediate
butt of their banter. "Richard wants to make her! Richard has the
hots! Richard wants to lay her!" He took it all in good part, even when
one of them seriously offered to "fix him up" with Moira.

Moira herself recalls being quite aware of the joke during that
evening. At first, she had the usual reactions, half-amused, half-
embarrassed. And she probably would never have been of any help to
Richard if she had not taken the initiative. It was in the morning
before their departure. Richard came down early to find Moira
preparing for breakfast.

From the beginning Moira quickly sensed that this was not just
another young man flirting with her. Nor did he act shyly. Beyond a
cheerful "Hi, good-mornin'," he said little in the beginning, but started
automatically to help her in the breakfast preparations. But she had a
strange conviction that she and he had an unconscious agreement or
bond. The feeling was disturbing at first; then it became a surprising
pleasure.

As they worked she asked if he had any sisters.

"Three." His expression was blank, neither pleasured nor disdainful.

They busied themselves setting the table. He glanced at her once or
twice. Then: "The trip was fantastic. Ever been out there?" She shook
her head, waiting for the usual litany of events, feats of male
endurance and strength. But Richard continued: "I found what I want
to be out there."

She asked if he wanted to be a forest ranger. "No! No!" Richard
answered. He had found out, he explained, what sort of person he
wanted to be. He looked up at her, his eyes shining. Moira braced
herself for some protestation of eternal love and irresistible attraction.
But Richard, eyes still shining, said only: "On the level, Moira, I want
to be like you."

Moira's first impulse was to burst out laughing, make a wisecrack,
and carry on. But something stirred within her cautioning her. She
turned away quickly to the stove, disturbed, a little frightened. He
worked on, talking all the while.

He said he knew he sounded funny, but he meant what he was
saying; it was hard to explain, but he wanted to tell her. She tried to

202 THE CASES

interrupt, but his voice cut across hers hard, almost in reproach. She
looked around at him. His eyes were filled with tears. He still had the
shining look, but a strange expression of an apologetic grimace
touched his mouth fleetingly. "Sorry. Didn't mean to shout."

"You weren't shouting. I just opened my big mouth." She followed
his glance out the wide floor-to-ceiling windows of the kitchen. The
mountains covered with forests crouched out there, their distance
foreshortened in the morning haze; they looked as if the boy and girl
in the kitchen could touch them with outstretched hands.

"Whatever it was, Richard, it was very beautiful," she said to break
the tension of the silence. "I hope you get what you want. It A ust be
very beautiful."

"You know, then. You know." He was excited and boyish, still
looking out. "I will get it. For sure, now."

iMoira had no clear idea of what he was thinking. Since her early
teenage she had been used to boys of various types for which she had
her own names — the "brawns (athletes, outdoor types), the "softies"
(nice but weak), the "teddy bears" (effeminate), the "profs" (studious,
serious). They all talked about themselves and nearly always in terms
of achievement in school, in business, in sport, or with other girls. She
was sure now that Richard fitted into none of her categories. The
caution about him she had felt earlier in the conversation had given
away now to a sensation of fragility in him matching her own. She felt
that he knew — even if he did not possess the instinct for — that
detailed intimacy so characteristically feminine and the real bond
between all women as compared to and distinct from men.

Richard talked on happily while they finished the breakfast
preparations. He spoke of feelings and tastes, of touching trees, leaves,
grass, flowers, of the smell in the air, of the wind, of the silence, and of
his desire to be as "inside" himself as she was and as independent as
his father was. It was a staccato speech, punctuated with pauses, over
forks and spoons and glasses, running on pleasantly and softly. Just
before the first pair of legs bounded down the stairs, he paused; and
she, looking him straight in the eye, said: "Richard, shouldn't you ask

someone .

?"

"No one of them will understand. You know that," he answered
immediately but not abruptly. "Don't worry. I have plenty of advice.
From the right ones. When they're finished, I'll know how to feel
things, to be really boy and girl. All in one."

Moira remembers protesting with all the earnestness she could

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 2C>3

convey and trying to tell Richard that his "plan" sounded like the
hardest and maddest thing in the world.

"No!" Once again his tone had changed to a rough note. She caught
a glint at the back of his eyes which recalled her dim memory of an
Alsatian baring his teeth and growling at her long ago when she was
three. Now she was afraid. He told her abrasively: "Only a few can get
it." He was smiling, but she did not like the smile. "That's the name of
the game," he remarked some moments later.

Moira thought that he was going to continue talking. But at that
moment the kitchen was invaded by seven other young men, loud,
laughing, joking, looking for breakfast, and loosening the spell of a
situation that had become uncomfortable and eerie for her. Moira saw
the veils closing over Richard's eyes. He became once more the easy,
good-natured, smiling companion she had seen entering the house the
day before.

Back home in Detroit a few days later, and into the school year,
Richard continued to live in the memories of his vacation. Without
knowing it, he was probing deep into one of the most mysterious
elements of human personality: gender. In retrospect we can see how
the peculiarities of his personal makeup were responsible in some
degree for his later development. They do not, however, explain in any
way the onset of possession.

After one more year in high school, Richard went on to college.
During his first year there, both his older brothers got married. His
three sisters had already left home and were married. Although he
spent a lot of time comparing himself to them, Richard never really
knew them. He never engaged in any deep conversations with his
sisters, and he did not get any clear feeling for their points of view
where they differed from his.

He majored in mathematics, taking English liteiature and French as
extra credits. He corresponded regularly with Moira in Colorado, and
with time a deep friendship sprang up between them. Sometimes he
spent vacations with her and her family; sometimes Moira came to
Detroit and spent time with Richard's family. Moira was studying
English literature and journalism at the University of Denver. She
intended to enter the field of publishing.

Toward the end of his second year, he had a conversation with his
father, who was taken aback to find his son spouting what seemed to
him to be very advanced and unorthodox ideas about sexuality.
Richard had read all of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf's Orlando,

204 THE CASES

George Sand's Indiana, and a host of other books his father had never
heard of. He could quote anthropologists and social scientists in
support of his views about matriarchy and woman's superior power
and status.

His father consulted the rabbi of the local synagogue. And, during
the following Easter vacation, Richard and his father went to see the
rabbi. The rabbi found Richard quite sensible and his views reason-
able. He pointed out to Richard and his father that the original
Hebrew in the Bible does not say God created Eve, the first woman,
from a rib of Adam. The word used at this place in the Bible means
"one of two matching panels." He further pointed out that this Bible
account is essentially androgynous. "So man and woman are equal
halves of the same entity," concluded the rabbi, "but woman is most
like God because she has the womb of creation in her." It was all very
confusing for Richard's father. But Richard found in it a fresh impetus
for his dreams of femaleness.

Toward the end of his last year in college, Richard spoke to his
father about a job in the insurance office. He had no particular desire
to specialize in any subject. Medicine and law did not interest him.
What Richard was really looking for was a situation in which he could
achieve his dream.

In early June 1961, at the age of twenty-one, Richard took up daily
work at his father's insurance office. He proved a very willing
apprentice. He was conscientious, took instructions, worked long
hours, willingly gave up weekends to work on difficult claims, and
studied law at night. His father was very proud of his decision and his
performance. His mother loved having one son still at home.

In his free time Richard continued reading. He spent long hours
walking by himself. Since he was out of college and no longer forced to
take part in group activities, he began to elaborate his ideal.

He had one constantly recurring dream day and night. Once and for
all, he fancied, everybody knew he was woman and man all in one. It
was public knowledge, he dreamed, and accepted joyfully and
admiringly by everyone. He wore either male or female clothes,
according to the ebb and flow of his sexuality. His skin was either
smooth or hard, his voice metallic and masculine or husky and deep,
his hair long or short, his mind logical and rationalizing or intuitive and
feeling, his breasts round and full with marked nipples or flat and
formless, his genitals male or female. But he was chiefly female
and feminine — with a very marked peculiarity.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 205

In his dream he had, as a man, attracted a beautiful woman who
possessed his own female face and body. She was he in female form.
When they made love together, he was not merely a male entering a
female. He was a female taking a male into her secret mystery. He not
only had the male sense of arrival and expansion. He had the female
sense of falling through the velvet veils of that mystery where wreaths
of creation and shaping forms of arcane worlds wove around him with
soft murmurs of love.

Sometimes in his dreams, all this took place at home in Detroit,
sometimes at the lakeside in the Colorado mountains, sometimes in
exotic lands. But most often the entire scene was played out in a small
house surrounded by trees and standing on the edge of water.
Wherever he traveled for the company, Richard began to keep his
eyes open: perhaps, he would find a house similar to the one in his
dreams.

His relationship with Moira now became something more than close
friendship. Moira, in Richard's eyes, was still the woman of his
Colorado experience and he felt she could be part of his continuing
dream of perfect man-woman love. And Moira was in love with
Richard. It seemed perfect — on the outside. Gradually it became a
mutual assumption that they were engaged and that they would
eventually get married. In Moira's mind this would take place when
Richard got a promotion in his company. In Richard's mind it could
only take place when he found his dream house.

In mid- 1963, Richard's company sent him to Tanglewood in eastern
Illinois as a temporary substitute for a sick member of the local office.
In Tanglewood, Richard found several advantages. His new boss liked
him very much. It was a far cry from the urban ills of midtown
Detroit. His new post was in effect a promotion. The Tanglewood
office was just beginning to expand, and Richard could be in on the
ground floor of the company's ambitious programs.

Chiefly, however, Richard found what he knew was the nearest
approach to the house of his dreams. It was called Lake House:
single-storied, standing on three acres of land, with sliding glass panels
in the back giving on to a large pond. The original owners, back in the
late nineteenth century, had covered the three acres with trees,
chestnut, sycamore, pine, elm, birch, oak. On his first visit to inspect it,
Richard heard the wind in the trees by the water's edge. He knew this
was his house. And it was for lease.

By that autumn, he had moved into Lake House. With the

2()6 THE CASES

recommendation of his new boss, he obtained a permanent transfer to
Tanglewood. Then he wrote triumphantly to Moira asking her to
marry him. She answered immediatel) by telegram.

They were married in Tanglewood on June 21, 1964. They decided
not to go away for their honeymoon, but to spend it at home in Lake
House. By their own choice, also, they arrived there alone in the
evening of that day. All seemed perfect. The weather had a gentle
balm to it all day; the sun was warm, but a light wind sang in the trees
keeping everything cool and clean. "Our house is clean, not pots-and-
pans clean," said Moira misquoting F. Scott Fitzgerald, "but wind-
swept clean!"

In all the years of their friendship and engagement, they had never
gone beyond a very occasional kiss of passion. Again, as with many
other aspects of their relationship, each had assumed that the other
wished it that way. Their first evening and night together as married
people was something Richard had lived again and again in his dreams.
It proved a total disaster, however, and not because they both were
virgins, but on account of Richard's strange behavior and Moira's
reactions.

They had taken hours in going to bed, strolling down by the water
and through the trees, chatting on the porch, and gazing quietly at the
night all around them.

Eventually they were side by side. Moira's mind and body, by that
time, were totally attuned to Richard's movements, the warmth of his
body, the smell of it, the urgency he felt. She glanced at his face, her
eyes full of invitation. Richard was lying on his back, his face turned
toward the open glass panels. He seemed to be listening to the night
sounds outside around the pond — -the wind in the trees, the ruffling of
the water, the owls hooting.

Then he turned his head toward her: "Now, darling," he said,
strangely quiet, "now Lake House is full of them. I am all of me
tonight."

Moira did not understand. She didn't care. He was already kissing
and caressing her, entering her. And, eyes closed, her hands all over
him, she started for the first time to feel the urging climb of ecstasy in
loving.

Then she heard his voice — this time with a note of stridency —
saying: "Open your eyes! Look at me!"

The sight of his face froze every muscle in Moira's body. It was like
a flat, featureless surface without a line. There was no expression on it.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 207

His mouth was closed. His eyes were open, but, unblinking and still,
they were mere sightless hollows glazed over with a dead patina.

''You're not seeing me, Richard," she said weakly.

But his body had become enormously heavy; she could breathe only
with difficulty. She felt a sudden shooting contraction in her belly and
groin. A sweat of pain broke out all over her body like a thin film.
"Richard!" she tried to call out.

Richard was not with her. From the moment he turned back from
the window, he had seen no one but his female self. When he entered
Moira, a storm was on him over which he had no control. It was
carrying him, petrified by increasing longing and intensifying loathing
at one and the same time, at a speed which ruled out any resistance on
his part. Longing and loathing were becoming so intertwined that the
more repulsion he felt, the more readily he gave in to longing. But this
only brought on increased loathing, so that longing and loathing
became one. And both were coming from inside himself. He was their
source. The higher he went on that first level of ecstasy, the lower he
went on that second level of disgust.

All Richard could see was that beautiful face of his female self flung
back in an effort to match his passion. At the same time he began to
feel her hands on him as claws scraping his back and buttocks, first
lightly, then with increasing pressure and tearing his skin. When she
opened her eyes, their deep blue was swimming with feeling. Then
they narrowed and glinted with a beige glow that reminded him of
pigs' eyes, but his fascination with all this only swelled.

"You're not seeing me, Richard!" he heard his female self saying.
"Look at me! Look at me!"

He groped with his body for her inner mystery, trying to explore
every curve and cranny of her vagina. And, as he did, he felt in himself
the rocking motion of something hard and angular. He heard the
voice: "Let me take you, secret and all, mystery and all, Richard" — he
could not know if it was his own voice or another's — "I'm your fucker
. . . your fucker. Let me!" The voice died away again to a heavy,
labored breathing that rose and fell with increasing gusts. It seemed to
be acquiring a voiced character, a sound produced in a spittle-filled
throat, wheezing, grunting, blowing, inhaling.

Now his longing and loathing were reaching a climax. There was no
ejaculation. Rather he swelled and grew bigger and swelled with
desire until he felt his middle opening up; and, with a loathing that
held him hypnotized, he knew that an alien body was pouring fluid

208 THE CASES

through him, hot, sticky, scorching. Loving and disgust became one.
He started to thrash and flail.

By this time, Moira was screaming with fear as his terrible weight
pressed down on her. She began to choke on the scream. Suddenly, he
was off her. Her voice trailed away.

Richard was over by the far wall, a letter opener in his hand. He was
standing with his back to her, tearing and gouging at the wall with
wide sweeps of his hand, scraping paper and plaster on to the floor,
while he hammered the wall with a clenched fist. A muffled groan
rising and falling was all she heard from him.

His back, buttocks, and legs were a field of criss-crossing welts,
scrapes, and lesions oozing with little pinpoints of blood at various
places.

By now, Moira was afraid for her life. Without hesitation, she was
out of bed and running through the door. She grabbed her coat and
the car keys, flung the hall door open, and made for the car. " Moira!"
she heard him shout brokenly. ''Come back! Moira, don't go. Help me!
Come back!" But by then she was halfway down the drive. She found
her parents asleep in their hotel room. She never returned to Lake
House or to Richard. Two years later she obtained a divorce from him.

Richard's dream was shattered. But there was something else in its
place. He knew now that he had something new in him, something
alive, something alien to him, but now his familiar and cohabitant.

He spent the two weeks of what would have been his honeymoon
inside Lake House, rarely eating, refusing all callers, never answering
the telephone. Gradually he returned to normal life. He was back at
work in the office on the appointed day.

Outside office hours and activity, unless he was traveling, Richard
stayed at Lake House. He never received visitors. Even when his
family came to see him, they stayed in one of Tanglewood's hotels.
Lake House was his refuge and his castle. On weekends he lay in bed
in the morning waiting for sunrise. Regularly, as the first streaks of
gray light appeared, the birds started to sing in the trees. First one
here and there, then another one or two, then two or three together,
until the house and garden were filled with the dawn chorus of
thrushes, finches, robins, wrens, starlings.

At night and at any time possible he listened to the wind singing in
the trees. It still brought tears to his eyes. And always he strained to
remember the voice behind the wind and to capture its message and

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 20Q

the identity of the messenger. His outlook was still filled with the
mystery and power of femaleness. And, he was sure, the wind spoke of
this and the birds sang of it.

Richard was now in the second stage of his development. His old
idea of an androgynous self had melted. On his trips for the company
business, he spent time regularly with prostitutes, and occasionally had
relations with female clients and office personnel. He repelled any
homosexual advances.

He admitted to himself after a while that in all these sexual
encounters it was not a genuinely male sexual desire that impelled
him. It was rather a jealous curiosity about the female and the
feminine. He was always watching on the sidelines. No woman ever
came back to him a second time. And more than one prostitute
remarked as she left him: "You're freaky."

He once invited a woman to Lake House because he wished to have
relations with her while listening to the wind. Everything went well
for a while, but something frightened her, and she fled from him as
precipitately as Moira had.

It was frustrating for him. He could only speculate about the female
ecstasy and experience. He noticed that some women, in having
intercourse, moaned in a dying fashion, turning their heads as if to
avoid blows or to catch a mouthful of air. And he wondered what sort
of lovely death that could be under the knife of female pleasure and
secret power, and what sort of enshrined mystery a woman possessed
that enabled her to live and die all over again the next time. For that
was how he thought of it.

But, in the meantime, his own identity — sexual and otherwise —
underwent an eclipse. For three years he never listened to or looked at
another human being. He merely heard and saw them. He lost,
therefore, any grasp on his own identity. He had no clear perception of
who he was, what he was about, where he was going, where he came
from. The pattern of his identity was in disarray: an essential piece had
been withdrawn invisibly but with shocking results. All the earlier
personal lines, geometrically clear and personally pleasing, had melted
into a criss-crossed haze. The fine tones and delicate shades of taste
and distaste, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion lost stability and
definition. All were now clouds and swirls of the unknown and the
unpredictable. The various gears of his inner mechanism in mind, will,
memory, brain, heart, gut feelings were working at cross-purposes.

He stood helplessly hip deep in the running streams of impulses

210 THE CASES

where before a sharp instinct or a brilliant perception had teamed
with a never-failing voice in his heart. The self he originally proposed
to free and ennoble had become indeterminate; it was colored by any
element injected into him. He was a cracked bell jangling to the blow
of any hammer. He was a bag of emptiness blowing and puffing on
insubstantial air. Living now in an inner uncertainty of selfhood that
nothing could dispel, he had become the reality of his former
nightmare: a nonperson for himself. What he had cherished as a dream
of happiness had become in reality an empty void.

And this was not all. He found out on one particular occasion that
already within him there were impulses he could no longer govern,
and that these impulses seemed to arise from his original ambition to
enjoy both masculine and feminine qualities. On that occasion he
recognized the big change in himself. It was around the middle of
December 1968. He was on the road for his company. The weather
was very bad: snow, sleet, strong winds, gale warnings. On his last
evening in the city he was visiting, he was walking home from a late
meeting with a client. It was around midnight. No one was out at that
hour in such wintry weather. Richard walked because the wind, his
wind, was blowing with a high-pitched sound — almost a warning, but
still enticing.

The way to his hotel led him past rows of detached houses. About
half a mile from the hotel, he heard a moaning sound from some
bushes and trees that stood in a deserted area between two houses. He
stopped and looked around. There was no one in sight. Most of the
nearby houses were dark, their owners probably asleep or absent.
Richard followed the direction of the moaning. Behind the bushes he
came across a spread-eagled form. It was a young black girl. She had
been raped and stabbed. She was practically naked; her clothes had
been torn off her. Between her legs and at her shoulder blood stained
the snow in small, dark patches.

Richard was fascinated. He watched her for a while. Then he lifted
his head and listened to the wind, feeling its fingers brushing and
striking his face. He crept forward, keeping his head down against the
wind, then stopped and watched her more closely, The girl was still
moaning; her head twitched now and then.

Richard remembers very little else. He recalls tearing off his own
clothes feverishly (he was afraid she might die before he finished what
he wished to do). He talks almost tearfully now of feeling an
irresistible desire to have relations with her then and there. He recalls

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 211

the wind whistling music in his ears and then, marvelously, changing
that music to words. He remembers catching the last glance of the girl
who stared at him for one instant before her eyes went completely
dead. He felt her body shudder.

Then apparently he stood up in a frenzy of triumph — he had
achieved the ultimate watch on woman, he felt. He was seized by a
great giddiness as the wind whipped around him. And now, for the
first time, he sensed clearly that all his thinking and willing and feeling
and imagining led like so many strings back to some central point in
him where they lay in the hand of another, who controlled them and
him. He felt the security of being controlled and the promise of
success: "You shall be as woman!'

Afterward, when he reflected coolly on the incident, he realized
that even in her death throes that woman had shown him the power of
the feminine; his sexual relations with her had been a revelation for
him. He knew that a decision had been made for him. He did not, as
yet, guess from where that decision had come. But he did know what
he had to do.

In the new year Richard went to New York. In previous years he
had read extensively about transsexuals and the new transsexualizing
operation. He now put himself under the care and supervision of a
doctor who assured him that within 16 to 20 months, if all went well
with the tests and preparations, he could have the operation, remove
all trace of his male inadequacy — this was how Richard looked at his
genitals — and acquire the organs of a woman. In late 1970, after
passing successfully through the psychiatric examinations, and the
necessary changes in the chemistry of his body having been produced
by repeated treatments, Richard underwent surgery and emerged
successfully from his convalescence in a new state of almost delirious
happiness. He returned to Lake House. His mother and father came to
see him, as did his brothers and sisters. They had become reconciled to
his new status as well as to his newly adopted name of Rita. His boss at
the insurance office was persuaded by his father that R ichard could do
the same work even better than before. So two months later, Richard
was back to a normal life of daily work. As Rita.

The tempo of Richard /Rita's inner existence now changed. He
found his outlook running in two main streams. One was the expected
femaleness resulting from the operation. He found greater delight in
little details — of cloth, of a story, of colors, of people's voices, in
architecture. No longer did he look for large, sweeping lines in the

212 THE CASES

world around him, nor did he feel inclined to argue logically or to
engage in verbal polemics. He felt himself more vulnerable, more
susceptible to praise and flattery, on the watch for compliments from
men. He had a varied sexual life: he did not discriminate between old
and young, ugly and beautiful. It was enough for him that he was
desired and that they all found in him something that mystified them
while holding them.

The other stream in his outlook was pockmarked with some stinging
deficiencies that distressed him continually. When he had intercourse,
for instance, he felt a great deadness in himself: there was no
after-feeling of warmth and togetherness and perpetuity. And often
this lack was accompanied by an inner bitterness that drove him into
rages. It became an obsession with him "to make love and feel life" in
himself after he had done so, and to hear his partner express himself in
similar terms. But nothing he did ever produced a ray of hope in this
direction, until he met Paul.

Paul, a Chicagoan, a former minister who had turned to banking
and brokerage and become a millionaire in the process, was a very
impressive character. Tall, good-looking, with salt-and-pepper hair,
suave, well dressed, educated, a very good conversationalist, Paul had
a brilliant smile. He and Richard/Rita liked each other from the first
moment they met at a cocktail party. Richard eventually told Paul his
life history. He was surprised by Paul's matter-of-fact reaction. What
amazed Richard /Rita more than that was Paul's understanding of his
difficulty in having intercourse and in its aftermath.

"I think something can be done about all that, Rita," he said. "But
you will have to consummate a carefully arranged marriage."

"Marriage? But marriage is impossible — at least very difficult,"
answered Richard.

"Not the marriage I have in mind. You just need the right partner
under the right circumstances. You don't realize it, but you have been
preparing for quite a while for this marriage. Leave it all to me."

Richard /Rita did not understand what Paul meant, until he
participated in the Black Mass on June 21, 1971.

The invitation he received from Paul was ostensibly for a midnight
party. It was a sultry night without a patch of wind. When
Richard /Rita arrived around 10: 00 p.m., he was struck by the lavish
surroundings. The house, dating from the previous century, stood in its
own grounds. About 80 guests were drinking and eating a cold buffet
around an open-air pool illuminated by tall, thick candles. Another 40

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 213

guests were dancing inside in the ballroom. The air was full of
chattering, laughter, music, and celebrations. Paul immediately intro-
duced Richard /Rita to a table at which two young women and their
escorts sat. Merriment pervaded the group. Everybody was excited
and happy.

From his position, Richard/Rita could see both ends of the pool. At
each end there was a long table covered with food, drinks, ice buckets,
and flowers. Behind each table, a long, wall-high, embroidered red
curtain hung from a pole. A butler in black evening clothes stood
motionless by each curtain.

Richard /Rita felt surprisingly at home. He joined in the laughter
and talk around the table, and cheered as some of the more mellowed
guests shoved each other fully clothed into the water.

At 12:45 PM -> Richard/Rita suddenly noticed a hush. Nobody was
speaking any longer. The stereo music had gone silent. Without his
realizing it, about three-quarters of the guests had departed. The two
couples who had been at his table had excused themselves shortly
before, saying that they wanted to dance.

The guests who remained had fallen silent. They stood in two
groups at either end of the pool, facing each other across the water.
Then, Richard /Rita noticed his tall host signaling to the two butlers.
With a solemn movement, they pulled aside the curtains.

When the curtains parted, Richard /Rita could see a low altar table
at either end of the pool. Above each altar there hung an ornament in
the shape of an inverted triangle. At its center there was an inverted
crucifix, the head of the crucified resting on the angle of the apex of
the triangle. From the interior of the house he now heard the low peals
of an organ. And someone was burning incense there, so that the
fumes drifted out lazily and lay across the air like slowly twisting blue
serpents. Then the guests started to undress in an unconcerned
fashion, each one dropping his or her clothes where they stood.

As if on signal, both groups turned and started to come around the
sides of the pool toward Richard /Rita. He started to get up when
Paul's hand fell on his shoulder gently but firmly: "Wait, Rita." The
naked guests filed around him and stood stock-still. Nobody had yet
spoken a word. Then Paul took Richard /Rita's arm so that he stood
up. Twenty pairs of arms stretched out from all sides; and unhurriedly,
calmly, they undressed Richard/Rita. His host, Paul, was nowhere to
be seen at that moment.

Then one guest, a young blond man in his late twenties, came

214 THE CASES

forward. Around his neck he wore a narrow black stole. There was a
ruby ring on the index finger of his left hand.

"Rita," he said evenly to Richard/Rita, '1 am Father Samson,
willing minister of our Lord Satan. Come! Let us adore."

His voice, the hands and fingers of the guests, the low organ music,
the sultry night, the light feeling in his body, the languid odor of the
incense, all this fell into a pattern of softness which Richard /Rita felt
all around him. He turned as gravely as the others and walked in
procession around the pool, past the tall candlesticks, until they
reached one of the altars.

Now he had no further difficulty in understanding what they
required of him. He waited passively and quietly.

They easily lifted Richard/ Rita and placed him on his back flat on
the altar. Father Samson then appeared carrying a chalice. Someone
placed a small folded cloth on Richard/ Rita's pubic hair. Samson stood
the chalice on the cloth. Then Richard/ Rita heard three voices
chanting the opening words of the old Latin Mass: "In nomine Patris
et Filii et Spiritus Sancti," to which they added the extra name: "et
domini nostri Satanas." Richard/Rita now understood. He felt a
strange exultation.

Father Samson had begun reading from a black-bound book held by
another naked guest, a woman of about thirty-five. He gestured
gravely as he proceeded. The others had grouped themselves around
in two concentric circles: the inner circle, all males, had placed, each
one, the left hand on some part of Richard/ Rita's body. Those in the
outer circle, all females, had placed their hands on the hips of the
males.

Just before the consecration, a woman pricked a vein in Richard/
Rita's arm, letting some drops of his blood fall and mix with the wine
in the chalice. Once Father Samson had uttered the words of the
consecration ("This is my body . . ."), the guests paired off, lay down
on the floor, each man lying between the legs of a woman. Father
Samson parted Richard/ Rita's legs, mounted the altar, entered
Richard /Rita fully, took the chalice, sipped it, held it to Richard/
Rita's lips so that he could sip it, and handed it to the nearest pair.
While this pair was sipping the chalice, Father Samson started
rhythmically to push and pull in Richard /Rita, saying as a refrain:
"Say- tan! . . . Say-tan! . . . Say-tan!," lengthening the first syllable as
he drew partially out of Richard /Rita and hitting the second syllable
with hard emphasis as he drove into Richard /Rita. As each pair

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 215

handed on the chalice, they started to copulate following the rhythm
of Father Samson, until all — men, women, and Father Samson — were
chanting and copulating in unison. Richard /Rita was the only silent
one.

He lay, eyes closed, while Father Samson chanted on him. For the
first time Richard /Rita felt a strange tingling starting at his buttocks,
up through his spine, up the nape of his neck, around his skull, down
into his shoulderblades, past his middle and abdomen, in around his
vagina and down through his groin and calves, to the tips of his toes.
For all the world it felt as if an electrifying fluid was being poured into
him from Samson. Richard /Rita opened his eyes to look at Samson,
but the light was too dim, and the blue trails of the incense were
weaving through his vision.

Richard/ Rita could hear heavy breathing, but he could see no face,
only the outline of a head. He murmured: "Father Samson . . . Lord
Satan . . . Father Samson . . . Lord" — but he was interrupted by a
harsh, grating sound of single words coming to him through the heavy
breathing. "Girl-Fixer! . . . Girl-Fixer! . . . Girl-Fixer!'' Richard/
Rita no longer heard the chant of "Say-tan!" Now all seemed to be
joining in "Girl-Fixer! . . . Girl-Fixer! . . . Girl-Fixer!" Father
Samson's index finger was now deep in Richard/ Rita's rectum,
massaging, scooping, probing, pulling, pushing. Richard/Rita felt his
own semen being loosened and flowing; and, inside him, he had a
sharp sensation of very hot, sticky oil squirting around the wall of his
vagina as he heaved and shook. "Have me! Girl-Fixer! . . . Father
Satan . . . have me . . . smell me . . . fuck me . . . through . . .
through ..." Richard/Rita's voice rose steeply into a loud scream.
The organ notes thundered, filling the air. As each pair of the guests
reached orgasm, they screamed and groaned in a jumble of half-words:
"Sayt . . . fuck . . . take . . . Sayt . . . have . . . smell . . . cunt . . .
prick ..."

The scene subsided slowly. As the waves of pain, pleasure, and
exultation ebbed in Richard /Rita, he knew that he now had a
shadow — or, at least, that is how he described it. It was not glued to
his body, nor did it fall on the ground beside him wherever he went. It
was like a twin spirit or soul of his own soul or spirit. And it possessed
his own thoughts, memories, imaginations, desires, words.

Richard/Rita again opened his eyes. Father Samson was gone. Paul,
his host, unsmiling, grave, helped him off the altar and motioned him
to stand, legs well apart. One by one each of the guests came forward

2l6 THE CASES

on their knees. Bending the head and pronouncing the long word
"Say-tan!," they clamped their lips over his vagina and sucked. Then
they backed away out of the pool area.

When the last guest was gone, Paul handed Richard /Rita his
clothes, helped him to dress, led him around the house to the front,
where a limousine waited with its engine ticking. The chauffeur
opened the door for Richard /Rita. "You belong now, Rita. Serve him
well" was Paul's parting phrase.

As he lay in bed later, Richard /Rita could sense his shadow near
him and with him. He felt secure. When sleep came, it was dreamless
and deep.

The aftermath was terrible. He now found that all his sexual
activity — whether in fantasy or in fact — had become of the same
texture as that repulsive level on which he had moved the night of his
wedding to Moira. And it reduced all pleasantness, pleasure, beauty,
joy, ecstasy, to sexual terms which today he characterizes as "animal-
ity." It made him feel and think and live like an animal in heat, an
animal which by a freak accident had been provided with a
self-conscious mind and memory, but which would shortly lose those
faculties and revert to being just animal.

Richard/ Rita is the only ex-possessed person I have known who still
has a clear memory of what precise differences the culmination of
possession made to his inner self — mind, memory, will, emotions,
imagination.

The entry point of continued possession, its bastion, was his
imagination. In listening to him, one has to remember Richard's
specific problem: gender and sexuality were one and the same for him.
Once possession was completed, it seemed to him that he had an
invisible but tangibly felt shadow, a twin of himself but yet distinct
from him, and that from that point onward self-control and direction
in him were exercised by that twin.

He points to the fluid or electrifying effect he received from Father
Samson at the Black Mass. For it now appeared to Richard/Rita that
in his conscious hours all his thoughts and willing and remembering
and sensations (and, therefore, all he said and did in the view or
hearing of others) came in a very different way. Now continuously his
imagination — rather than his memory or his senses or his reasoning
mind — received "imprints" or "messages": images, pictures, diagrams.
There was also some other force or influence he could not accurately

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 217

name. But because it specifically, directly, and exclusively concerned
his sexuality, he calls it the S-factor.

Once his imagination received one of those "messages" or "im-
prints," then the whole internal mechanism of thinking, willing,
remembering, and feeling with his five senses came into play. The
control thus exercised on him was absolute. If he smelt an odor, if he
desired something, if he remembered anything, if he thought or
reasoned, it was all made possible by a prior "imprint." And
consequently any words he spoke or actions he performed were made
possible only by that source.

The exercise of his sexuality — his desire and its consummation — was
under the strictest control. The desire came without warning: it did
not arise due to any exterior stimulus.

To cap it all, there were other moments: hours of high possession
when the control exercised over him acquired an intensity which
blotted all else out. In "normal" time of possession, he was still
self-aware, i.e., he saw and felt himself under the inescapable influence
of those "imprints," but it was he himself who thought, remembered,
imagined, spoke, walked, acted. At the "high moments" of possession,
it seemed to him that he no longer did any of those things. The very
insides of his soul or spirit seemed to be drenched in another's being.

He himself felt reduced to a tiny pinpoint of identity, to be
imprisoned in the most solitary of solitudes, while every fiber and
sinew of his life was permeated with an alien tyranny, a brute
authority.

And, as he is able to relate it now, only in that microscopic
reduction of himself did he spontaneously revolt. There he had no
memory of the past — only a memory that there had been a memory.
Nor had he any anticipation of the future — only a consciousness that
anticipation was impossible. Neither praying nor cursing, neither
praise nor blasphemy was possible there. It was an undivided and
infinitely sad present, an awareness of oneself surrounded by utter
blackness and nothingness. The very self of Richard/Rita always
refused (although it could do nothing about expelling) that constant
shadow.

Richard /Rita is emphatic on one point: the strict separation and
distinction between the detectable and measurable area of his
thoughts, emotions, memories, external actions, sensations, etc., on the
one hand; and, on the other, the self he never ceased to be. All through

2l8 THE CASES

his enigmatic experiences, that detectable and measurable area varied
and changed under the influx of differing intensities, as masculine and
feminine, male and female traits ebbed and flowed in him. Psycholo-
gists would, justifiably in their terms, describe it as rather extensive
changes of personality. But the self — whether reduced to the pinpoint
of possessed slavery or free within the general control of the central
point in his imagination — that self never ceased to be the same.

Asked about the suffering specific to possession, Richard /Rita says
that the genuine pain of possession does not come from any physical
distortion, deterioration, or ravages — these most of the time provide
the possessed with a savagely twisted pleasure and thrill. But it lies
instead in what he calls the "mirror of existence" of the possessed.

The unpossessed, the normal person, is aware of the self he is only
when it is reflected in another person or in things other than himself.
And, without ever realizing it, when we perceive ourselves reflected in
someone else or in objects other than ourselves, we instinctively
compare that reflection of the self with an ideal measure we have
formed but which we usually leave unspoken, even unthought. It is,
however, ever present to us when we make comparisons of ourselves.
This is the third, the hidden third, necessary for all comparison
between two things. To be self-aware is to be able to compare our
selves with the reflection and with the ideal measure.

The possessed has no such awareness. For in the state of possession,
the self-consciousness and self-awareness of the possessed becomes
absolute solitude. There is no hidden third, no ideal. Metaphorically
speaking, in possession a mirror is held up in which the self of the
possessed sees only itself in itself in itself in itself and so on in an
infinitely receding number of self-containing, self-mirroring images,
with no end in sight. And this awareness is, by definition, complete
and unending solitude.

For those near Richard/ Rita — his office colleagues, his immediate
family, the few friends he had made in the immediate neighborhood of
Tanglewood, there was a marked change in him dating from June 1971
onward. Their memories of this change are unanimous and date from
about the time of the Black Mass — of which they knew nothing, of
course.

Richard /Rita now always wore male clothing; but ordinary people,
who did not know his story, could not make out exactly whether it was
a man or a woman they were meeting in Richard. Then there was the
smell, not unpleasant, just pervasive. It has been described by some as

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 21Q

"musky," by others as "faded perfume" such as you get when you
open an old chest of drawers, by others still as "a clean animal smell."
It pervaded Lake House, his room at the insurance offices, his car, his
clothes, even his handwritten letters. People always found it distinc-
tive; some found it repulsive. It varied in strength.

Finally there were his peculiar fits. His normally deep-blue eyes
would take on a greenish hue. Some hidden glow or luminescence
emphasized the down of his face, neck, arms, hands, and legs, so that
he looked sort of furry; but when you looked closely, you saw only
skin. He spoke very little, mainly single words and at an extremely
slow pace, accompanied by a combination of chuckles, grunts, snorts,
twisting of his eyebrows, and mouth grimaces that contorted his lips
around his teeth. Yet it was the indescribably roughened tone or
timbre of his voice that disturbed people the most during his fits.

At first sporadic through the summer of 1971, these fits increased in
frequency, so that by late October they were of daily occurrence.
There was then a peculiar fear-causing element in any conversation
with Richard/ Rita — and his job was 80 percent of a talking nature.
When anyone spoke to him, their words seemed to fall into a deep,
deep hole and to be lost. They felt he hadn't heard or that, if he had,
there was no communication between them. Then, as they were giving
up or trying again by repeating what they had said, he spoke either in
single words or in a series of disconnected words. They made sense
and, most of the time, gave an answer. But they seemed to come from
far in the distance, from the bottomless depth of that hole into which
their words had fallen. Impersonal, uncommunicative of any personal-
ity, unwarm, at that stage Richard/ Rita reminded some people of the
humanly unresponsive effect a tape recording gave them.

People quickly learned that his responses and conversation always
made sense. Indeed, they were highly intelligent and relevant. His
business judgment was better than ever before. But always the
freakish atmosphere communicated by the tone of his voice disturbed
them. This, together with an almost overnight suspicion in his
colleagues that "wherever Richard /Rita is, there is always trouble,"
finally brought his dismissal from work and caused him to lose his
friends one by one.

The "trouble" was eerie. At first, it affected mainly his life at the
insurance office. But gradually it affected anyone who contacted him
even fleetingly — the delivery boys from the grocer, druggist, and dry
cleaners, his cleaning woman, the laundry woman, his gardener. Once

220 THE CASES

it got to a policeman who gave him a traffic ticket. And eventually it
affected each member of his family who visited him. The "trouble"
was strictly reminiscent of what happened at the Tower of Babel in
the Bible story. Men and women who had known each other for years
and had worked together intimately for substantial periods of time
suddenly started to misunderstand each other and to wrangle and
quarrel. To some onlookers of such "trouble," it seemed as if what one
person said was heard backwards by another person, i.e., with exactly
the contrary meaning that the speaker intended. The "trouble"
affected only those talking and dealing with each other. But once any
onlooker got between the disputants — entered their "atmosphere," so
to speak — he or she was also affected by the "trouble"; and there was
an additional source of babel and confusion and wrangling.

Incidents of this kind took place always and only where Richard/
Rita was present physically. He seemed to be highly amused at the
whole thing, but he himself never got caught by the "trouble."

The "trouble" also affected those writing or typing in his presence:
they wrote or typed the opposite of what they meant, or it turned out
to be complete nonsense. And all incidents of the "trouble" cumula-
tively pointed too strongly in Richard/ Rita's direction to be explained
in complete disconnection from him.

When there was no fit of any kind and no "trouble," Richard/ Rita's
accustomed sweetness of character and affability came to the fore. The
change at those moments was almost shocking.

It was some time before Richard/ Rita realized why he had lost
friends, why he found people turning away from him, and why he
became unpopular in his office.

In the last days of October he was fired. His brother, Bert, came in
to see him. Then Bert went and talked with his immediate boss. From
what Bert learned from him and from others in Tanglewood, joined to
his own impressions, he concluded that his brother needed psychiatric
care. But Richard /Rita's behavior then became a hide-and-go-seek
game. Whenever he visited the psychiatrist, he was absolutely normal;
and the psychiatrist could find nothing wrong or sick about him, no
matter what diagnostic means he used. Indeed, the psychiatrist
concluded that Richard /Rita's dismissal from the office was based on
the boss's repulsion of Richard/ Rita as a transsexual; and he advised
Richard/ Rita to sue for damages and reinstatement in his job.

But matters took another turn when Bert and Jasper came and
stayed with him for a long weekend. Richard/Rita had several fits.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 221

And the "trouble" was again very evident. Now, in his calm moments,
Richard /Rita talked to them frankly and pathetically. He had begun to
know in a dim and fragmentary way something of the drastic changes
in him.

His brothers stayed on at his house, determined to get to the bottom
of it all. Richard willingly underwent a complete physical checkup.
The results were negative. Further psychiatric examinations were
equally fruitless.

Bert and Jasper together with Richard /Rita decided to ask the local
Lutheran pastor for some advice. He diagnosed Richard/Rita as a soul
who had neglected God and prayer. When the pastor's counseling was
of no avail, they called on the local rabbi. This man, a very saintly
person, consented to read some prayers in Richard/Rita's presence.
He also read some texts of the Talmud and explained them to the three
brothers.

The following days, there was no change in Richard /Rita's general
condition. They then decided to call on the local Roman Catholic
pastor. The three of them walked over to see Father Byrnes, who
already knew Richard /Rita by name and sight. He listened to them,
but threw cold water on any expectations of concrete help. It wasn't
because they were non-Catholics, he explained apologetically, and he
sounded sincere to them. But he didn't know what to do. Sure, he
would include Richard /Rita in his prayers. But, they shouldn't forget,
so had the others. And what good had all that done? It didn't seem
enough, Father Byrnes concluded. Bert took Father Byrnes aside and
pleaded with him: his brother was ill in some peculiar way. Doctors
and psychiatrists had given up on him. Didn't Father Byrnes know
some Catholic priest who might help?

"Call me tomorrow, after midday," Father Byrnes answered. He
had just remembered Father Gerald and his great common sense.

THE GIRL-FIXER

The morning of the exorcism Richard /Rita rose early, bathed, washed
his hair, carefully sprayed himself with deodorant, and applied his
favorite perfume to neck, breasts, wrists, and behind his ears. He put
on a pair of dark blue slacks, a red turtleneck sweater, and loose
sandals. His long black hair was brushed and combed in a simple
manner. He wore no makeup or jewelry.

222 THE CASES

When he was dressed, he went out and fed the ducks in the pond,
walked around for a while, then returned in time to greet Gerald's
assistants at the door.

Partly because his two brothers were assistants, it was almost like a
group of intimate friends gathering for a reunion or for the celebration
of a very private event. Richard /Rita collaborated laughingly and
pleasantly, making coffee, arranging the room for the rite of Exorcism,
and in general was very apologetic and apparently appreciative of the
"inconvenience being given," as he said repeatedly. For the exorcism,
Richard/ Rita's bedroom had been chosen by Gerald after some
discussion, and mainly because it seemed to be the place Richard/ Rita
wanted most to avoid.

When all was ready, Richard /Rita sat down with the assistants and
waited, sometimes chatting, sometimes praying with them, until
Gerald's car was heard in the driveway. Bert went out, reported to
Gerald, then came back and told Richard/Rita to sit or lie down on
the couch. But Richard/Rita insisted on waiting for Gerald.

Gerald entered the bedroom with Father John. Both wore their
ceremonial robes. All, including Richard/Rita, knelt down as they
recited a prayer to the Holy Spirit. Then, with Richard /Rita still
kneeling, the assistants arranged themselves around Gerald. He
opened the exorcism with a prayer from the official ritual.

Richard/ Rita interrupted gently and boyishly. "Father Gerald,
don't you think we could hurry all this up? What I really need now is a
blessing and everybody's prayers and good-will wishes."

He stood up and shot a radiant, embarrassed smile of charm and
gratitude at each one present. Bert's heart was torn at the sight of his
baby brother. Most of them felt embarrassed, much as if — it was
Jasper, Richard /Rita's older brother, who made the remark later — as if
they had come to arrest someone for murder and found the supposed
murderer and his victim making love instead. Richard/Rita looked
very feminine that morning.

Gerald too was taken aback. His mind raced. Had he made a
mistake? Either they had made fools of themselves and of Richard/
Rita, or they were victims of a deeper deceit than he had anticipated.
But there was no time for reflection or pause. He had to make a
decision. The police captain and the teacher were looking at him as if
to say: "Let's get out of here, Father. Let's leave well enough alone/'
But Gerald knew he had to make certain.

"Fine, Rita," he said, surprised at his own acting, but smiling

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 223

nonchalantly. "Let's do just that. Here, John, give me the holy-water
flask. Jasper! Take my prayer book and put it in my briefcase. Bert,
please make more coffee. Someone go and telephone the rectory and
tell them I shall be back for lunch. Rita, hand rne the crucifix from the
table beside you, and let's get on with the blessing."

Afterward, when discussing the events of that morning, all agreed
that the moment Gerald finished his request to Richard /Rita some
sharp change took place in the room. It was a qualitative change, as
effective and as abrupt as a complete, instantaneous change in the
perfume of the air or in the room temperature. Some of them, not
guessing Gerald's ulterior motive, had started automatically to do what
he had asked them before he made his request to Richard/ Rita. But
the mysterious change in the room as Gerald spoke to Richard /Rita
brought them all up sharply. "Like red lights all around me," said one.
"Like a warning bell," commented another. "An eerie feeling in the
nape of my neck," was the teacher's description.

"We knew that suddenly another presence had become palpable to
us. We knew it was bad, bad, bad," declared Bert afterwards.

They all turned around and looked at Gerald and Richard/ Rita.
Gerald was standing almost on tiptoe, his request had been so barbed
with intent and its impact on Richard/Rita so tangible for him.
Richard/ Rita had sat down on the couch, a picture of puzzlement. His
forehead was a field of furrows. His eyebrows were almost touching in
quizzical expression. His mouth was tightly closed, the lower lip
clamped over the upper one. All color had drained from his cheeks.
They couldn't see his eyes. He was looking at his lap, where both his
hands closed and opened, from fist to open palm, then from open palm
to fist, continually, jerkingly, and slowly. Gerald held his own hand up
for silence and attention.

"Rita," he said softly, "hand me the crucifix." Tears started to glitter
on Richard/ Rita's eyelashes and then ran silently down his face.

"I want to be left alone. Please" — the voice was feminine and husky
and agonizing. Another burst of tears. He sobbed. "It's all too
much — I know none of you understand what has happened to me.
Moira does — ask her. But this is all a charade — I need only to be left
alone." More sobbing.

Gerald looked at Bert. Bert shrugged as if to say: Your decision!
Gerald opened his ritual: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit, we are here today to pray and ask that in the
name of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, whatever evil

224 THE CASES

spirit may have entered and possessed this creature of Almighty God's,
Rita O., will obey . . ."

The rest was drowned in Richard/ Rita's sobbing. He had turned
gently as if wounded or struck, and lay down on the couch, his back to
Gerald. They all listened to Richard /Rita, not hearing any more the
words Gerald was reading. They could only hear that sobbing, crying
voice, wailing and groaning with uncontrollable sorrow, his whole
body shaking with each sob, every sound of his voice filtering through
his throat and mouth as a terrible reproach to all present.

". . . and that whatever ill-effects the evil spirit has caused in
Rita," Gerald wound up, "may be cleansed and purified by the Grace
of the Lord, Jesus." Gerald concluded the first prayer.

At this mention of the name of Jesus, Richard/ Rita stiffened and
turned flat on his back. His face was not a picture of tears and sorrow
as they all had expected, but a writhing mass of hate, fear, and disgust.

"Take your Jesus and his filthy crucifix and his stinking holy water
and his withered priest and get out of my house." Both his arms were
stretched out at this point, the palms toward Gerald, warding off his
stare. "Take 'em out of here. I want to be alone."

Gerald saw Bert starting to go forward. "Bert!" he said sharply,
"stay where you are — just one moment." Bert stopped.

"Bert, save me from this lousy Catholic priest and his hocus-pocus.
Bert! Bert! Help me!" Bert started forward again. This time, John, the
younger priest, touched Bert on the arm: "Give Gerald one more
moment, Bert," he whispered, "just one more moment. We've got to
be sure."

"Bert!" continued Richard/Rita sobbingly, "I was supremely happy
until he started at me. It's all a mistake. I'm a woman, Bert. I'm a
woman. Like your Marcia [Bert's wife]. Like Moira. Like Mummy.
Like Julie [Bert's secretary]. See!" — and Richard/Rita tore down the
zipper of his slacks and opened the top button: "See! I've got pubic
hair and a cunt just like Marcia. Look, Bert! Come and feel it! It's hot
and wet. I can hold you, Bert, I can hold you now better than Julie.
Remember we used to masturbate together in bed as kids? Now you
can enter me. Help me, Bert. I'll be yours if you do!"

Bert fell back ashen-faced. Gerald reached forward, took the
crucifix, held it up in front of Richard/Rita.

"Rita, all will be well. We will leave you alone. Only now you have
to do what you did a few days ago in the rectory." When Richard/Rita
had come with Bert and Jasper to see him, he had laid his right hand

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 225

on a crucifix Gerald always kept on his desk and said: "By this, I
swear, Father Gerald: I want to be whole and entire and right with
God." All the time this ability of Richard/Rita to touch the crucifix
had given great encouragement to Gerald. It meant that the possession
of Richard/ Rita was an incomplete process as yet. Except in its
advanced stages, possession varies in its effects and characteristics.

But now Richard/Rita lay down on the couch, legs spread, hands
resting on his groin. They waited. His chest rose and fell as if he were
sleeping. Outside, the weather had turned dark. The wind was rising,
shaking the trees around the house with an irregular whining sound.

Then Richard /Rita's mouth opened and after what seemed minutes
they heard him speak, but with another voice. It was throaty, rasping,
slow, indistinguishable as to sex — it could have been female or male. It
was like the voice of some very elderly people — a hint of falsetto, a
trace of bass, but weary and ponderous, requiring effort.

"I know you're supposed to be a virgin, Father Gerald. What would
you know of woman — or of man, for that matter?"

Gerald decided to break in. "Tell us who you are."

Richard/Rita was silent a moment; then he spoke as if in a joke.
"Who I am? Why, Rita, of course. Who else? Stupid!"

"If you are Rita whom we know, sit up, and take this crucifix."

"Rita doesn't want to. Nah!"

"Why then are you sulking, Rita? Why not sit up and talk like an
ordinary human being with us?"

"Because . . . because . . . because I am not ordinary. Listen!"
Richard/ Rita's head turned toward the shuttered windows. His eyes
fluttered as if looking at a passing scene. His head turned back. "I am
not ordinary."

Gerald had his ritual book opened again and was about to start the
next part of the exorcism when a new thought suddenly occurred to
him: if he was merely speaking to Richard /Rita, wouldn't he be
missing the point of the exorcism? And couldn't Richard/Rita, or
whatever evil spirit possessed him at that moment, carry off a
magnificent deception — pretend, in fact, to cooperate? No! He had to
break down the facade, if facade there was. Gerald was groping
blindly to the truth of Father Conor's analysis without having had the
benefit of Conor's instruction. Cold experience was his hard teacher
that day.

He closed the book slowly, grasped the crucifix between his palms,
and started to question Richard /Rita. Now the exchange between

228 THE CASES

them settled down to a rather calm quest ion-and-answer exchange.
And it lasted that whole day. At one stage Rita fell silent. After
fruitless attempts to get answers from him, Gerald went outside,
washed, took some food, and returned. The day was already advanced.
The doctor had monitored Richard /Ritas breathing and pulse. All was
normal. As Gerald returned, they all began to feel the biting cold in
the room. James attended to the radiator, even went down to the
boiler in the cellar. The cold still persisted.

Gerald started again to question Richard/Rita. This time Richard/
Rita started to answer. Gerald probed, provoked, queried, objected,
interrupted, set traps, and tried in every way to break down the
resistance he felt in Richard/ Rita. Rut whatever he did, Richard/
Rita turned it aside with long, rambling answers, descriptions of
sexual acts, analysis of the male and female, small insults and jeers, an
occasional snide remark. So it went through the night and the small
hours of the morning.

We will never know now, but that procedure might have lasted
indefinitely until common sense and the limits of endurance indicated
to all that the exorcism was a failure — or, alternatively, that Richard/
Rita had never been possessed, but was just very abnormal in quite an
ordinary sense of the word. After many hours, however, Gerald began
to sense that at times he almost touched something, then it would
escape his grasp. At times, also, the others in the room would have a
strong sense of something alien, pressing on them. Then it would
lighten and disappear. All were becoming fidgety. All were tired.

The end of their waiting came unexpectedly with one blanket
statement of Gerald's in answer to a protest of Richard/Rita.

"But any ordinary woman wants to be held and cherished by her
man," Gerald was saying, "and, after that, to lead him where he could
not otherwise go. Hand in hand. And in truth. And in love. Not in
power or in superiority. They walk in God's smile. They reproduce his
beauty." Gerald was touching the very chord that had obsessed
Richard/Rita since his operation.

Richard/Rita stiffened. "Why the hell don't you leave me alone?
You and your God! Who needs his smile or his beauty?"

Gerald was alerted by a new note in Richard /Rita's voice. He could
not recognize it, but he knew it as a new note. And he had an idea.

"Why? Because I know you are not Rita. I know you are not
Richard. I know that Rita — Richard — loves God, his smile and his

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 227

beauty. But you — whatever or whoever you are — why don't you come
out from your lies and your deceptions and face us?"

All hell — as the police captain said later — broke loose. Richard /Rita
doubled up, his head resting on his feet, his body pumping spasmodi-
cally. The assistants held him and tried to straighten him out. They
could not move him; he was as heavy as pig iron. The couch shook and
trembled. The wallpaper above the bed peeled off, starting in one
corner, as if invisible fingers had yanked it violently. The shutters
shook and rattled. Richard /Rita started to break wind and scream at
the same time. Everybody there began to feel a peculiar pressure of
threat and fear. They started to perspire. Nothing had prepared them
for this feeling of incalculable danger.

"Let everybody hold! Stay calm!" It was Gerald warning them. He
was now aware that he had touched the essential core of their
problem. But he was still in the dark. He drew near the couch and
bent over Richard/ Rita, who was quite still; but his body was doubled
up as before, his head resting on his feet.

"Rita," he said in a clear, loud voice. "I tell you: we will keep on
struggling for you. So, you, you keep on fighting and resisting."

Richard/ Rita jerked and shook for a few seconds, then his teeth
sank into the instep of one foot.

Gerald straightened up. He changed his tone to a sharp, inquisitor-
ial, and imperious note: "You, Evil Spirit, you will obey our
commands."

Again, the rasping voice: "You do not know what you're getting
into, priest. You cannot pay the price. It's not your virginity merely
that you'll lose. And not merely your life. You'll lose it all — "

"As Jesus, Our Lord, bore sufferings, so I am willing to bear what it
costs to expel you and send you back to where you came from."

This was Gerald's first error. Without realizing it, and in what
looked like heroism, he had fallen into an old trap. They were now on
a personal plane: he versus the evil spirit. No exorcist can function in a
personal way, in his own right, offering his strength or his will alone to
counter and challenge the possessing spirit. He never should try to
function in place of Jesus, but merely speak and act in concert with
him as his representative.

For Gerald the cost of that mistake was high. He had never dreamed
that physical punishment could be so intense. It was a full three weeks
before he could get up and hobble around his room in great pain; that

228 THE CASES

violent attack on him would eventually prove lethal for Gerald. But
these were not his deepest sufferings. In those few seconds of storm
when he was hurled across the room and slammed against the wall, it
was a sense of violation that shook and tore him.

Only then did he realize that, up to that moment, indeed all his life,
he had enjoyed an immunity. An inner bastion of his very self, the core
of his person, had never been touched. Sorrow had never reached it.
Regret had never pained it. Nor had any twinge of weakness or guilt
ever ached there.

The strength of that private self had been its immunity. His
professional celibacy and physical virginity had been merely outward
expressions of the ultimately carefree condition of spirit in which he
had always existed. In a sense, sin or wrongdoing had never touched
him there, not because he had so decided, but because the choice had
never presented itself.

But, in a twist of egotism, that immune part of him had been the
source of his pride as it was of his independence. And friends who
marveled at his constancy as a priest and ascribed it to a genuine sort
of holiness could never have known — no more than Gerald himself —
that Gerald's ultimate strength was tainted with a great weakness: the
self-reliance of pride. The physical pain and injury that afflicted his
body during and after the attack was as much a symbol as it was
tangible expression of an inescapable weakness and fragility to which
he was heir merely by being human.

He recovered sufficiently from the attack, but he never again had
that old sense of immunity. Instead, there was born in him a
heightened feeling of helplessness. And, for the first time in his life, he
acknowledged his total dependence on God. And his outlook was now
permeated with that poignant sense which Christians traditionally had
described by a much misunderstood word: humility. It was a grateful
realization that love, not simply a great love, but love itself, had
chosen him and loved him for no other reason but love. "Only love
could love me" had been a saying of an ancient English saint, Juliana
of Norwich.

In the meanwhile, Gerald had to make a decision: to proceed with
the exorcism or declare it officially over. Richard/ Rita was now in an
abnormal stage even for him. He needed round-the-clock surveillance.
Usually he lay on the couch awake or asleep, or he stood by the
window apparently looking and listening. He was docile to any
suggestions of his brothers, but no one else could influence him. He ate

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 22g

sparingly, had to be washed like a baby, lapsed periodically into a
strange, babbling incoherence, and could not bear any mention of
Gerald, of religion, or of Exorcism. Nor would he allow any religious
object near him or in his house. He always seemed to know when any
such object was brought in. His cleaning woman, for instance, used to
wear a medal around her neck; she had to leave it at home. If his
brothers had spoken to Gerald, Richard/ Rita would know it when
they entered his presence. A scene would ensue, never violent, always
heart-rending and full of pleas to them that they save him from further
bother.

Gerald's health, meanwhile, was precarious and his friends became
worried. The doctor told him that he had developed a damaged heart,
and his physical lacerations had been very severe. The doctors had
patched him up to the best of their ability.

Besides his physical sufferings, Gerald was the subject of an odd
change in his sensations. He could not, for very long, see or touch any
material object without this change taking place. As he told me later:
"I seemed to be looking through it and around it — not beyond it. For
in some peculiar sense it was no longer there. Instead, with some sight
other than that of my eyes, I was held by the perception of a condition
or dimension or state for which I have no words. It — that condition —
seemed to be the real world. The material object — table, chair, wall,
food, whatever it was — seemed utterly unreal, to be nothing in fact.
And even my own body was for me an imagined shell permeated with
and held up by that other condition."

The effect of all this was very disturbing, especially when he met
others. What they saw was a thin, pale-faced man crooked in his
stance, leaning on a cane, who seemed to be looking at them with the
impersonal scrutiny of a stargazer or a map reader. He was still kind,
affable, even jocular, and always good-humored. In conversation, he
seemed to be very interested in people, not so much in themselves, as
in what they signified or where they stood spiritually. This was a novel
attitude for Gerald. What Gerald himself now found was that every
man and woman he met underwent the same "conditioning" in his
eyes as material objects. But, differently from objects, once the
underlying and invisible condition of a person became clear to him, he
sensed a new element.

He found it hard to express in one word or one phrase this new
element. When he went to great lengths to describe it, he ended
up — with constant assertions that he was only using images and

23O THE CASES

metaphors — talking about ^light/" "blackness," "presence," "ab-
sence," "a web of yesses." His description of someone might be: "He's
been saying, 'No, no,' all his life." Or: "She has never really said, 'Yes,'
to the 'presence.' " Or: "They're in a very black context." Practically
speaking, he found, this new way of looking at people placed him at a
distance from everyone, no matter how well he knew them or liked
them. Any knowledge of them through his mind and any attachment
to them by his will was only possible in this new dimension.

The pastor of his rectory went so far as to consult one of the psy-
chiatrists whom Gerald had originally consulted about Richard/
Rita. When Gerald left the hospital and was convalescing at the
rectory, Dr. Hammond together with a colleague turned up at the
rectory to see him one afternoon. He had run a complete check on
Gerald's background, he told Gerald, from his childhood to that
moment in time. He and his colleagues were convinced that Gerald
himself had been severely traumatized, and — more seriously — that,
because Gerald could not really understand sexuality and its complex-
ities, he had unwittingly evoked an alienated condition in Richard/
Rita. In their opinion, and for the sake of their professional integrity
as well as Gerald's own sake, they would ask Gerald to place himsejf
voluntarily under their controlled observation at the clinic. Richard/
Rita, they thought, would respond to normal therapy.

For different reasons, the pastor was equally adamant in this point
of view. Rumors of the exorcism's strange result had filtered to the
bishop of the diocese. And he sent word to the pastor that he expected
him to arrange everything so that there would be no more trouble and
no fresh rash of rumors and scandal. One report had it that
Richard/ Rita had raped Gerald. And this was not the ugliest of the
rumors floating around the parish.

Gerald, at first very angry with the psychiatrists, finally began to see
it their way. Or at least that was what he said. He added, however,
that they should not oppose his finishing the exorcism. If he could only
do this, he assured them, then he would be satisfied.

The final decision, of course, rested with Richard/ Rita's family and
with Bert in particular. Bert was convinced that Richard /Rita's
condition was the work of the devil, and that Gerald or another
Catholic priest should be allowed to complete the exorcism.

It was all very trying for Gerald. He felt "like a museum specimen
or a medical case," as he remarked to the pastor. Besides, something in

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 23 1

him told him that Richard /Rita could not go on and survive as he was,
nor could he himself leave the exorcism unfinished as it was.

"I have no death wish, Doctor," he said to the senior psychiatrist.
"But neither have I any illusions about myself or about you. I cannot
have long to live — even my own doctors agree on that. You have no
religious beliefs whatsoever, on your own admission. Unless we strike a
compromise, we will go on talking while Richard /Rita vegetates and I
die. So let's make a deal."

The deal was made. With conditions. Dr. Hammond was to be
present at the exorcism. If he and the doctor, independently of Gerald,
decided the resumed Exorcism ritual should be aborted at any
particular point, Gerald would abort it. The exorcism would not be
allowed to go beyond two days at maximum. On the other hand,
Gerald would be in complete control as the exorcism proceeded. Dr.
Hammond would behave exactly as one of Gerald's assistants. There
were one or two other conditions, mainly to help the professional
assessment and examination by the psychiatrist. But Gerald was
satisfied. He had gained an opportunity to finish the exorcism.

It was clear to Gerald now that only when he had attempted to
uncover and separate the evil spirit's identity from Richard /Rita's,
only then had he been attacked. He would take up at that very point
where the process had left off and proceed with great caution, not
drawing attention to himself in any way and endeavoring to rely on
the power of the official ritual and the symbolism of his function.

Early one morning, then, four and a half weeks after the violent
interruption of the exorcism, Dr. Hammond drove Gerald down to
Lake House to resume the exorcism of Richard /Rita. The assistants
were there already, together with Father John. It was a somber day. A
strong wind again bent the trees around the house. It started raining
shortly after they arrived and continued all day and into the evening.

Lake House itself was still and quiet. Richard /Rita was lying on the
couch quietly dozing when Gerald arrived. Then, as if on signal, he
doubled up and sank his teeth into his instep, opened his eyes and
fixed them silently on the door through which Gerald and John would
enter. Bert and Jasper, both carrying signs of the last few weeks in
drawn looks and low voices, stood with the police captain and the
teacher. Nobody spoke very much. As Gerald entered, Richard/Rita's
eyes blazed with a fresh light. He moaned hungrily as a dog would for
more food. His hands were opening and closing. Gerald gathered up

232 THE CASES

his strength as he took his place beside the couch. He had carefully
prepared his opening statement. But before he could speak, Richard/
Rita beat him to it. Loosening the teeth hold on his instep, and still
glaring at Gerald, he said: "Gerald, darling, why all the trouble? Look
what you have brought on yourself. You needn't bear all this pain. You
have no need to pay such a price." It was the same trap. This time
Gerald was ready.

"The price — whatever price is necessary — has already been paid.
You will obey the authority of Jesus and of his Church. Announce your
name."

Even as Gerald spoke, the pain ran quickly through new lanes in his
flesh and bones. The lower part of his body, from his navel to his toes,
grew rigid. The assistants saw the veins bulging on his forehead. He
was fighting for control, struggling not to lose consciousness, straining
to hear. Waiting and straining. Richard /Rita sank back flat on the
couch in a deflated fashion, eyes closed, arms and hands thrown across
his chest.

After a dull pause, when he had almost given up hope of evoking
obedience from the spirit, Gerald began to hear something that
resembled a voice but that was totally unintelligible to him. At first, he
thought that a group of people had arrived unannounced on the front
lawn of Lake House and were congregating close to the front
windows. But when he concentrated on that direction, the sound
seemed to be coming from Richard/ Rita, then again from the back of
the house. He distinctly heard several voices talking at the same time,
breaking off, starting, laughing, occasionally grunting, even yelling in a
mock fashion. They seemed to be both male and female, but the
female voices seemed to dominate. Then the chatter died away as if
they had all moved away from the house.

Gerald stared at Richard /Rita: he was silent and motionless. Gerald
was about to speak when the voices started again. This time they were
in the room, but tantalizing him: when he concentrated on Richard/
Rita, they seemed to come from behind him; when he turned around,
they seemed to come from Richard /Rita. He began to feel as if
fragments of voices were free-floating and moving around the room.
The assistants had not been prepared for eerie happenings such as this
because Gerald did not have enough experience or knowledge of
Exorcism to give them very detailed warnings. The strain they were
undergoing showed in their constant perspiration and trembling.

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 233

Dr. Hammond's reaction would have been comical under any other
circumstances but these. As Father John told it afterwards, the
psychiatrist started off with a professional expression of "business as
usual" — grave, expressionless, watchful eyes, steadily taking notes.
After a few minutes, his note-taking stopped, the expression on his
face changed from the bland professional to incredulity, then a touch
of impatience (as if he were being subjected to a practical joke), and
finally the slightly ashen look of a man catching up for the first time
with something unintelligible and alien to his opinion, threatening to
his sanity and self-control.

Gerald's puzzlement and dismay increased, because now he thought
he could distinguish single words and phrases of one voice in
particular; but every time, other words and phrases broke in and
cluttered his hearing. It all ended up as abstract gibberish.

Then the various strands of female voices seemed to quicken in pace
and to start blending into one pitch and timbre, as if, syllable by
syllable, all were catching up on a lead voice. And the male voices
began to slow down in attack and amplitude, until they became a
series of squeaks and sonorities more or less parallel but never
coinciding. The two levels, male and female, began to mingle and
sound as one in various syllables, but there were always overtones and
annoying echoes muddying his efforts to understand. Gerald decided
to intervene.

"Whatever or whoever you are, you are commanded in the name of
Jesus to state your name, to answer our questions."

With that, the volume of noise started to increase and with it an
uncontrollable dismay and fear in Gerald. He felt himself the target of
some leviathan voice croaking from bloated lungs, cavernous throat
and mouth, a voice of curses, abuse, blasphemy, in which his secret
sins, ill will, obscenities all echoed and rolled and issued as a malig-
nant challenge.

Young Father John found the sounds in the room almost unbearably
disturbing. He sprinkled holy water around Gerald and then around
the couch. The noise rose to a fresh crescendo, then started to fall
away. Richard/Rita, all this while, remained stretched out flat on his
back.

As the babel died away in a mumbling and choking sound, Gerald
received the first onslaught of the Clash. Nobody had prepared him for
it, and nobody had told him what to do. The old Dominican friar in

234 THE CASES

Chicago had merely said that at some point "the old fella" would have
to come out as himself. He warned Gerald to take care at that
point — "It's worse than I can ever hope to tell you." It was.

Gerald's greatest quality — stubbornness — now became the source of
his torture. For he could not, would not let go. He had locked his will
into that of the evil spirit. Even if in some exorcists the Clash starts in
the mind, the imagination, or in a powerful intuitive sense of theirs, it
finally comes home in full force to the will. From the start it was in
Gerald's will that the struggle took place.

Up to that moment he had felt his will pushing against a steel wall of
resistance and attack. Now the wall seemed to melt and flow all
around, while his will plunged into the molten heart of liquid heat that
scorched and sizzled and frittered away every thew and sinew of his
will, searing through every trace of padding and protection a human
will employs — hopefulness, anticipation, remembrance of pleasure,
satisfaction in fidelity, conscious ability to change or not to change,
surety, persuasion that one is doing the right thing.

It was not a darkness of mind, but a nudity of will. It was the place
of deepest poignancy and sharpest sorrowing that any human being
can reach while in a mortal condition. Dante had described it as the
pathos of the soul which is not condemned to Hell (and knows that),
but has no means of knowing if Heaven exists and yet must persevere
in hope that apparent hopelessness is a prelude to happiness and
reward.

Then the Clash materialized in his physical self. One by one, his
hearing, his sight, his senses of touch, smell, and taste were affected.
His vision became blurred — almost the same as when one videotape is
played over another; both are clear enough to be seen, neither is clear
enough to eliminate doubt. In his eardrums there began the sort of
ache produced by a sudden burst of a jackhammer; and the ache
continued. Whatever he touched gave him the funny shiver through
the small of his back and spine he used to get when somebody rubbed
a pane of glass with a dry thumb. His mouth tasted as if he had been
chewing sour mijk and flour. And a wild odor he could not define
lodged in his nostrils. Not of rottenness or putrefaction or sewage, but
a sharp odor that his sense of smell could not take without a stinging
recoil seizing his sinuses and the back of his mouth and throat in
revulsion.

His assistants saw Gerald as he began to jackknife over. Two held
him, one on either side; but, faithful to his instructions, they did not

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 2,35

attempt to lead him out of the room. "(Jan von make it, Father?"
asked Dr. Hammond. Gerald's only answer was to jerk his head in a
quick gesture.

The uncanny pressure was climaxing inside in his will and outside in
his body. He felt the recently healed wounds in his back and belly
loosening and flowing, the scabs giving way, and a salty sting in the
opening flesh. He felt the wetness of his own blood and sweat. And
Gerald knew he now had to make a supreme effort.

"Your name! You who torment this creature of God. In the name of
Jesus, and because of his power, your name! Now! Your name!"

He heard the last rumbling traces of that attacking voice fading
away. Richard /Rita stirred as if prodded with a sharp knife, writhing
his head, neck, and back. He groaned. Then all in the room heard a
little gravelly whisper, not faltering, just deliberate and slow.

"Girl-Fixer. The Girl-Fixer. Girl-Fixer. We fix em. All sorts of girls.
Young, old, married, unmarried, lesbians, neuters, girls who want to be
fixed. Those who want to be fixed like girls. Anyone. We fix 'em.
Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!" It was a larynx-shaking velp. "We fix em right!

Gerald's weight on the arm of his assistants grew heavy. The
pressure on him was increasing again. But he knew the name now.
Girl-Fixer. He had broken through the deadly charade and he knew
with every instinct that he must pursue hard before his advantage
could slip away.

"You will tell us: how many of you are there? Who are you? What
do you do? Why do you hold this creature of God in slavery? You will
tell us. Speak!"

Gerald would have gone on repeating the same commands, but the
younger priest made a small gesture reminding him he was falling into
a repetitive pattern. They both waited. Gerald was still fighting the
poison inside him. All his pain was with him.

"Take you, for example, Priest!" The contempt and hate in the tone
was chilling. "We fixed you, didn't we? Just feel, kiddo. Or just try to
do something with your end, fore or aft. Oh, yes! We fixed von.
Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!"

Gerald steadied himself and tried to wet his lips; his mouth was dry
and furry. His sight was getting blurred again. He had to keep at it.
The teacher lifted a cup of water to his lips. He had to keep at it. He
moistened his tongue and started again.

"Tell us, in the name of Jesus ..."

He was interrupted by a low groan from Richard/ Rita. Its agony

236 THE CASES

paralyzed everyone; joined to the volume of pain and suffering in his
own body, it struck Gerald dumb. Each of the others was affected by
that groan: each one's imagination and memory went out of control.
The police captain was back in the Korean prison camp where he had
languished for two years; his buddy was groaning his life away in pain,
as a grinning interrogator scraped the flesh off his ribs. The teacher
was back in Surrey, England, in 1941, beside a German plane that had
crashlanded, bursting into flames; the trapped German pilot was
screaming, "Mutti! Mutti!" as he burned inside the plane. Richard's
brothers were standing beside a shuddering, dying wolf they had shot
over ten years ago during a hunting trip in Canada with their father;
the wolf was groaning defiance and coughing up blood and staring at
them. The doctor was back on a house call of the previous winter
when he had watched a father, bending over the still-warm body of his
dead three-month-old baby son, choke in hoarse, dry sobs. Everyone
felt guilty, as of murder or willful torture. Someone or something was
suffering untold pain and blaming them all.

Only John, the younger priest, had no horror image or dreadful
memory. He tried to finish Geralds command. And it was a painful
mistake.

"Answer," he said loudly, his voice cracking with nervousness. "In
the name of Jesus, answer our questions ..."

"Don't, John," Gerald interrupted thickly. But it was too late. The
damage was done. The groaning stopped. Richard/Rita rolled over on
his back, then sat up. There was a sudden, dreadful lull. The others
were jerked back to the present. They tensed, ready to jump and hold
Richard /Rita down. But all Richard/ Rita did was to open one eye. It
appeared luminous, slitted, evilly joyous, focusing on John.

"Ah! The lily-white cur!" Each word came out like paste squeezed
slowly from a tube. Everyone present and listening waited on every
syllable. "We'll fix you. In time." Gerald was filled with pity for John:
now he was in for it.

"You'll lose some of your hair. And you'll sit in a confessional and
secretly wonder why they do the things they confess to you. And the
wonder will change to curiosity. And the curiosity to desire. You won't
admit it, but you will end with desire. To murder. To steal. To fuck.
Whatever they tell you. And you'll feel the prick in you and you'll
fudge on the monies. And you'll tilt the bottle. Then you'll let her hot
hands soothe your fever" — the sarcasm was biting — "and when you
get up, she'll drive you to the sea for your health and you'll have a

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 237

quickie in the back of the ear — all for the love of vour sugar-coated
Jesus. And shell need more and more of your love of God. And more.
And more. And more. And" — the voice was now at a screaming
crescendo — "you'll take several wives of several men, just to console
them. You'll be a whoremaster on the altar, you lilv-white cur. And
you'll be afraid to confess it." Richard/Rita started to screech and
howl with laughter, rolling around the couch. "Maybe" — he stopped
laughing and fixed John again with the one eye speculatively —
"maybe, you'll come even into my box."

The captain laid two strong hands on Richard /Rita's shoulders,
restraining him firmly but gently. He was suddenly quiet. Then he
turned the one eye on the captain and wrinkled his nose in mock
disgust: "He'll screw your wife. Yours! She wants him already. A nice
clean young man no woman ever had."

"Frank, hold it," Gerald said hurriedly to the captain. He squeezed
John's hand to reassure the young priest. He was now standing erect
by himself. He reassured them all with a glance. Then slowly and in a
solemn tone of voice to Richard/Rita: "Your name is Girl-Fixer. You
will answer our questions." Painstakingly he listed them: "How many
of you are there? Who are you? What do you do? Why do you hold
this person whom Jesus saved?"

Each question acted like a hammer blow on Richard /Rita. With
each one Richard/ Rita sank back further on the couch. He seemed to
shrink and diminish as if being flattened. A look of trapped horror
spread over his face like a film.

Gerald continued: "I ask these questions in the name of Jesus. You
will answer."

Richard/ Ritas body relaxed and went limp; he lay on his back, eyes
closed. The captain loosened his hold finally and stood back. Gerald
motioned to the assistants; thev moved awav from the bed. Richard/
Rita's two brothers looked at each other for a brief instant. They
recollected later: their horror was almost equaled by their ounositv.
What malign and dark forces had seized their brother? Wbv? Gould he
be freed of them? Would thev give up?

The pressure on Gerald was lightening inch by inch, he felt. He
could feel little pockets of relief throughout his body. His vision
started to clear up again. His ears stopped aching. He was no longer
bleeding. He still had the inexorable gnawing around his middle, but
now it was a dully insistent pain, steady, unwavering, predictable.

For a few minutes Richard/ Rita's mouth opened and shut alter-

238 THE CASES

nately. They could see his tongue moving inside, his cheeks tautening
and loosening, his Adam's apple jerking up and down, He seemed to
be forming words soundlessly.

Then they began to hear him, at first faintly as a distant whisper,
then in half words, then broken phrases, finally in whole sentences
punctuated by trailing pauses and delivered in that gravelly tone
which not even his brothers recognized as that of the Richard they had
known all their lives. Dr. Hammond, too, had recovered his compo-
sure, and was once more engaged in clinical observation of what was
happening.

"How many of you are there?" Gerald repeated. Then he leaned
forward listening intently. Bit by bit, he began to pick up the middle
of words, the beginnings of phrases.

". . . numbers . . . no bodies, fool . . . can you can't . . .

numerality . . . spr . . . negative math . . . count only in power

. . . unbroken will each and eve . . . stick together . . .

gargantuan push on little pygmies ... no one solitary . . . off on their
own . . . nothing . . . any one of us alone is nothing, has nothing . . .
among us, a single spirit is merely a few fibers — will, mind — strung out
on a measly being forever headed to an eternal absence, an endless
vacuum ... a belly on two legs stumbling aimlessly across the dry bed
of confirmed hopelessness . . . that's each one alone . . . impossible
. . . nothing, a real nothing . . . hating, loathing, loving unlove and
unloving . . . together around a human or hating the High Enemy
. . . oaaaaaaaaaah . . . the push and shove and dent we make, the
Kingdom, the Kingdom, there High Enemy never rules, dense,
indistinguishable, one mass, one will, one complete beast, one
brilliance pouring from the Daring One to all the others. So that
humans back into the corner . . . take darkness as their lot, disease
and pain and death and darkness ... on all sides scratched, bitter,
stung, deadened, maddened by the crawling members of the Kingdom,
the Kingdom . . ."

"Have you all various names?" Gerald interjected. "Are you all
equal? What are your identities?"

The voice coming from Richard/Rita had sunk to a stage whisper.

"Brilliant! Brilliant!" the psychologist breathed wonderingly to
Gerald. "Just tne question to be asked!"

"Must you go further on this line, Father?" Bert asked Gerald,
watching his brother in dismay.

"Kindly wait, my dear man." Dr. Hammond's eyes were bulging

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 239

with interest, his face flushed with anger at the interruption. "This
may be a landmark case of multiple personality."

Gerald looked sideways at the psychiatrist. It was a look more of
pity than surprise. But there was no time for more.

". . . round and fat and red and black and male and female and
what they do or smell like or walk like or do like, pygmy humans . . .
names, what names? ... a breath of little lungs . . . it's what we do,
we are . . . millions if you count the wills, the minds, infinite if you
weigh the hatings, the living hatings . . . one above the other, no one
is all, all are under one, some so near the Daring One they have
intelligence only the High Enemy can match, some so low they are
turds, the shards, the lumps beneath his heel, the dust between his toes
. . . and loving it all, all the degradation . . . anything to disfigure
beauty."

A fit of crackling, cackling laughter seemed to grip Richard /Rita.
Whatever or whoever was amused, it was a frightening look Richard/
Rita now wore: his mouth drawn back, all his teeth bared, his cheeks
lined from the stretching of the lips, chin bobbing up and down,
nostrils flaring and distended — and the ugly horror of that amusement.
This was no belly laugh or dry, subtle joke, no reaction to fine wit or
deep humor. Just a triumphal screeching sound undulating out on felt
waves of satisfaction for hate, of acquiescence in unhappiness, of
refusal to envisage any existence but that of living in death, of
mercilessness, of perpetual banality exalted into a way of existence.

Gerald spoke again. "What do you do, you of the Kingdom?
Girl-Fixer? All of you? What do you do?"

Richard /Rita was now covered with perspiration. His clothes and
the top of the couch were sodden. The temperature of the room had
become stifling in the last hour. A stale odor hung in the air. Each one
present had a throbbing headache. Bert and Jasper had begun again to
support Gerald on either side. Both the brothers looked like men
wounded and bled dry of any feeling. They had been numbed by
compassion for their brother and by fear for his well-being. Father
John was saying his rosary beads. The teacher and the police captain
stood on either side of the couch. Listening to Richard/Rita's rambling
talk, they seemed to have shrunk to shadows of their former selves,
their burly forms drooping and listless.

The only one still spry, coldly thoughtful, active, still moving around
and in apparent control of himself, was the psychiatrist. In spite of his
apparent stress, there was a gleam in his eyes, picked up by his

240 THE CASES

steel-rimmed spectacles, that bespoke the professional behaving
predictably in the teeth of invaluable experience. Dear God, Gerald
prayed silently, let him be spared the price of any further stupidity he
may yet commit.

Dr. Hammond, however, concentrated on Richard /Rita's reply as
his body stiffened on the couch. The police captain and the teacher
held Richard /Rita down. Jasper left Gerald's side and placed his hands
on Richard/ Rita's ankles. They could all ''feel" the resistance coming.

"Why should we reply? The High ..."

"Because Jesus commands you. And his cross protects us. And you
were defeated by his sacrifice. And you will obey. Answer."

Again Richard/ Rita went limp. The groaning started and lasted a
minute or two. James could feel his brother's whole body vibrating as
if electric waves were being shot through it in quick, successive spurts.

"We . . . we . . . leave us to the Kingdom. You hear! Rita is one of
us now. Forever. You cannot have Rita."

"Rita is baptized. And saved. And forgiven. You do not anymore
have the freedom of Rita's body and Rita's soul," Gerald shot with a
savagery he never had felt before. "You will tell us what you do, how
you fix. Answer. In the name of Jesus."

For a few minutes, Gerald had the impression that the confused
babel of voices was starting again, but it came to nothing. In that tiny,
limping, unknown voice, Richard /Rita spoke again. It was the weird
and unaccustomed voice that made him a stranger to his brothers.

"Oh, it starts with the box and ends with the box. So long as we
make them think the box is all, we fix them. We can make a whore of
the grandest — all legal, all secure, if once ... if once they think the
box is woman, woman a box . . . the greatest insult to the High
Enemy, because woman is likest to the High Enemy. A man is a thing.
A woman is being. We fix them so they think . . . it's nothing but a
big, fat dick in a sea of hormones, and smellings and screams, and all
the shouting and jabbing and pulling and jerking. Tie them to the
dickybird tight in his cage. Tie them to that. Don't let them see
beyond. And she will make the man in her image. Tie him too ..."
Richard /Rita broke off, turning on the couch and gasping as if for air.
"You! Priest! We've fixed you for . . ."

"No, Girl-Fixer. Jesus has defeated you. In his name you will
answer: why do you hold this creature, Rita, in slavery? Why?"

Gerald in his inexperience was following a dangerous yet apparently
elementary line of reasoning. It seemed logical to him to insist on

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 24 1

finding out why or how Richard /Rita had come to be possessed. But
there was always the danger that his own mental curiosity would
conquer his better judgment. He might, in that case, advance so far as
to tamper with the innards of evil and get injured beyond repair.

As it turned out before the end of the exorcism, it was not Gerald
who suffered the consequences of such tampering.

"We do as we are bidden by the Daring One. Rita was our prey, our
soul. Rita chose to be a box, to be a box, to be a box, to be a box. Even
when the High One spoke, he chose to be a box, to be a box, to be a
box."

Gerald, by some inner sense, felt that one single, personal strand of
evil and resistance had faded or was fading from the scene; it felt as if
a lesser intelligence was now coping with his questions.

Richard /Rita began to struggle and gasp again. Gerald reflected for
a moment. What next? Should he keep silent and let all things quiet
down? Should he press forward and extract more information? He
remembered the old Dominican saying with a shake of the head: "If
you get a chance to squeeze them dry of words, do so. If you can, press
them to tell what exactly happened. But don't get into a give-and-take
of a normal argument. They will always beat you. And a beating can
be more than you can take."

Gerald looked again at Richard/Rita; his body was thrashing back
and forth jerkily; the assistants were looking at Gerald for some
direction. He decided to ask one more question.

"Evil Spirit, in the name of Jesus, announce the trap in which you
caught Richard/ Rita. I ask this by the authority of the Church and in
the name of Jesus."

Richard /Rita's horrible voice answered: "We start with self-growth,
self-discovery. We tell 'em, we told Rita: First, you must be yourself,
find yourself, know who you are. They stick their noses in their own
navels and say: I like my own smell! Then, that woman alone, woman
alone, is the thing to be. She has it all within her, but man has it all
hanging out."

The assistants had moved away from the couch and stood in almost
unbelieving fright near Gerald. Bert no longer supported Gerald, but
leaned on the night table.

"To be a woman is to be completely independent, we tell them. No
guilt. Not masculine. Not feminine. Complete in herself. Cunt and clit
in one. Androgynous. Free of guilt feelings, of all responsibility to a
man. Biologicaaaaaaaaaaal!" Richard/Rita's voice stretched out, ca-

242 THE CASES

ressing the last syllable. At a sign from Gerald, the assistants moved
baek and laid hands on Richard/Rita. A pause. Then: "To be freed
from any need of other. Let them think that they are past ambition of
ecstasy on a prick, but totally sensual because they can laugh at love
and all its makings; that they are developing their own self-contained
skills; that her own intimacy with herself is the whole world, without
the intrusion of the male; that she is full of internal spaces in herself,
infinite spaces, infinite enough to contain all she could ever wish to
have or be; that she can be tranquil, full of personalities, many-sided,
all of man, without his tomfoolery, all of woman without the alley-cat
carry-on."

Richard /Rita stopped. Only the four pairs of hands restrained him
from getting up. His legs and arms wrestled for a few moments, then
ceased. He groaned again and began to mutter inaudibly.

"Speak, Girl-Fixer! Speak! Let us hear your voice clearly!"

"Then . . . then . . . the same old trap. The same old trap we've
taken many in — we still catch them in. That they fuck as necessarily as
birds sing, as water flows, as the fire burns. Merely to show how
independent they are. How superior they are. That if they don't
breathe for fucking, live for fucking, sing in fucking, they can't
breathe, cry, sing, love, or do anything. Be liberated. That's what they
begin to say. Man, woman, or goat, little boy, or if it comes to that,
little girl. And then, when Rita got there — Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!" It was a
yelp of triumph as before.

Gerald was in command. There was not even a vestige of the
Pretense now. But Richard/ Rita was still caught in the teeth of this
wild, evil thing and was virtually flung about on the couch as the
Girl-Fixer cackled on.

"And, after that . . . one penis. Then another penis. Then a third. A
fourth. A fifty- fourth. A forest of 'em. Sharp stakes. All the same.
Oeeeee! And then the hate at being loved so. And the disgust at
hating. And the hating of so loving. And the loving of hate. And the
lying in wait for the penis. And the laughter at its nonsense. And the
slavery. Many of us are the rump of the Daring One. Every Rita is a
piece of his shit ..."

It was enough. Gerald broke in brusquely. There was only one
question more. "At what point in time did Rita give over possession to
you? When was it consummated?"

"In the snow. In the wind. We knew then we could find a place in
him. Bend him to our will. But he had invited years before ..."

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 243

Gerald decided that all he wanted to know had been told. The evil
spirit had been sufficiently subdued and humiliated. Now it could be
expelled.

""Lord God of Heaven, in the name of Jesus Ghrist, your only
begotten son, and in the name of your Holy Spirit, we pray that you
will grant us our prayer and free this your servant, Richard, from the
toils of slavery and the foul possession of this evil spirit.'' Gerald had
been looking up at the ceiling during this prayer. Now he looked down
at Richard /Rita, held up the crucifix, and prepared to begin the final
exorcising prayer.

Dr. Hammond broke in, whispering urgently in his ear: "Father,
don't let it stop here. Let me put a few professionally oriented
questions."

In spite of his dislike of psychiatrists and his general annoyance with
this one, Gerald remained afraid for him. He whirled around painfully,
urgently pleading in a cracked voice: "For the love of Jesus, Dr.
Hammond, for your own sake, keep your mouth shut. Stay out of this.
You don't know what you . . ."

But it was too late. Dr. Hammond had gone over beside Richard/
Rita. He sat down on the edge of the couch and began to speak calmly,
persuasively.

"Now, Rita, we have nearly finished. This is almost at its close. You
will be calm. There's nothing to be fearful of. Answer my questions.
And after that, you will wake up."

Richard /Rita stopped turning and twisting. He lay utterly still. His
face relaxed. The expression around his lips softened. Dr. Hammond,
rather tense in the beginning, now began to relax. It was a mistake on
Gerald's part to allow the psychiatrist to do this. No experienced
exorcist would have permitted such blatant and dangerous interfer-
ence. It was dangerous not only because the whole exorcism might
break down and be completely lost, but it could be possibly fatal for
the person so unwary as to reach out in ignorance and touch summary
evil. So it proved in one sense for Dr. Hammond.

A sudden, dull silence fell in the wake of his opening words to
Richard/ Rita. After all the pain and noise and groaning and strain,
that silence was surprisingly alien to them all. One by one, each head
lifted. Hammond's professional air — his blue business suit, his specta-
cles, his knowing tone, his very confidence in moving to Richard/ Rita's
couch and sitting down to speak, overruling Gerald's warnings by his

244 THE cases

behavior — all this made them think, as the policeman recalled, "After
all, this may be more normal than I thought."

But what Gerald sensed was not the lifting of an evil presence, but a
shift. Dr. Hammond had fallen into the same trap as Gerald had done
four and a half weeks before, and with infinitely poorer defenses than
even Gerald had had. Only Gerald and the teacher grew tense with
the fear of understanding.

But suddenly, almost in unison and as if their unwinding had been
something you could see and hear, they all stopped unwinding. You
could almost see and hear the sudden cessation of flooding relief. In
that silence they were listening. A change was taking place. They all
sensed now what Gerald and the teacher had sensed. A change in
something or somewhere near them or connected with them, with that
room, with Gerald, and with Richard/ Rita.

Finally even the psychiatrist stopped, his professional calm rup-
tured. He had the half-annoyed, half-hurt look of someone interrupted
in the middle of a sentence. He looked quickly at Gerald and the
others, alarm spreading across his features. For the first time in his
professional life, Dr. Hammond was face to face with something he
knew was far beyond his reach to categorize as a verifiable known or
unknown. What he was then beginning to perceive, he felt, he had
always known but never acknowledged, even in the deepest moments
of the eight years of analysis through which he had successfully passed.

But his scientific mind was his only ready defense, and he kept up
the protest in his mind: Verify! Get the facts! Test them! But he knew.
There was no verifiable fact. There was a reality made transparent to
him. Before this moment, he would have labeled this a product of the
irrational. But it now appeared to be real beyond all reason. And he
had always known it.

Slowly they all began to hear sound. It was, at the beginning, like
the sound of a crowd or mob — feet pounding faintly, voices shouting,
screaming, yelling, jeering, talking, distant whistling and grunting.
They could not fix from what direction it came. The teacher glanced
out the windows at the pond. The trees were moving gently in the
wind; a few ducks paddled around in the water; the evening was still
bright. Then the noise sounded nearer, just as confused as ever, but
now 7 with one overall mood or note; mourning for an ineluctable
sorrow. Listening to that sound on the tape recording of the exorcism,
and as it grows louder and louder, one begins to get the conviction of
listening to the tortured murmurs and helpless protests of a mob in

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 245

agony, keening and wailing for deeps of regret, screaming and
groaning for the ache of punishment and unremitting penalty, yelling
impotently in condemnation, vibrating as a whole beast of suffering, as
some protean heart thumping in the mud and squalor that history
never recorded and human mercy had never penetrated.

Over and above all the voices but constantly weaving in and out
among them, there was the full scream of a woman orchestrating all
the other noises and voices around itself as their theme. It came in
great rising and falling curves, louder and fainter, still louder and then
fainter, regular, upbeat, jarring, resounding with a passion of pain and
lost hope.

Gerald noticed that everyone in the room seemed to be bending,
lowering his height as if afraid of something moving in the upper part
of the room. Nothing was visible up there.

Dr. Hammond sat as if unable to move from the edge of the couch.
Richard/Rita's lips turned blue, his eyes open and staring vacantly.
The attending doctor moved to his side to take his pulse and found his
body very cold, the pulse steady but weak.

"Father, this cannot go on much longer," Father John managed to
shout to Gerald. "He's taken enough already."

"Not very much more! Not very long, now!" Gerald shouted back.
But the remainder of what he wanted to say went unsaid. It was the
psychiatrist who now claimed his attention. Dr. Hammond had slipped
off the couch and stood in an askew way looking halfway around over
his shoulder at Richard/Rita, his eyes narrowed with apprehension, his
notebook fallen and forgotten. No one, the psychiatrist included, could
shake his mind loose from the web of pain and regret pervading the
atmosphere.

The noise and the din of sobbing and mourning rose finally to an
undulating pitch. Richard/Rita's face suffused with color; red patches
and streaks discolored his arms and neck. Even his eyes deepened in
color. He was trying to speak.

Gerald was alerted: something was corning, and he felt he must
make his final challenge very fast.

"In the name of Jesus, you are commanded to leave this creature of
God. You will go out of Rita and leave him whole and entire ..."

Richard/Rita's sudden scream split their eardrums. "We go, Priest.
We go." It was a million turbulent voices as one, full of eternal ache
and pain. "We go in hate. And no one will change our hate. And we
will wait for you. When you come to die, we'll be there. We go.

246 THE CASES

But" — Gerald heard the sharp injection of hate hissing through the
sorrow — "we take him." Richard/Rita's hands suddenly swept up in a
wide arc toward Dr. Hammond. It was a quick but clumsy movement.

Hammond jumped backward. And Richard/Rita fell off the couch
to the floor as the assistants jumped forward and held him down.

"We already have his soul. We claim him. He is ours. And you
cannot do anything about that. We already have him. He is ours. W T e
needn't fight for him."

Richard/ Rita was wheezing like someone being asphyxiated, eyes
bulging, neck muscles standing out, his long hair falling back, his chest
heaving, as he half- rose in his effort. "You can't get him back. He is
ours. He does our work. He doesn't need a box. He puts everybody
else into it."

All calm was gone from Dr. Hammond; his face was a picture of
black fear.

"Here . . . we can't stay here any longer." It was still the voice
from Richard/Rita, and it was full of inflexible pain and bitterness.
"There is too much to suffer here. Where will we . . ." The voice
trailed off.

Richard /Rita kicked and scratched at the straining assistants. Then
he started to scream until at last he fainted, and above and around
them the last syllables of his words trailed off into the din of voices.
They spiraled up to a thin, high note, then sank to a thumping
resonance like the bellowing of a gored bull. Slowly they faded into
the distance. Those many tortuous voices, those myriad footfalls with
decreasing rhythm and ever fainter sound all began to withdraw
farther and farther from their presence, like a funeral procession
plodding its way inch by inch, swaying and twisting, out of the city of
man, swallowed by the great, unknown wilderness of the surrounding
night. That single beating scream of the woman still rang dolefully but
more and more faintly above the dying echoes of the withdrawing
multitude, until finally there was only a little swatch of sound rising
and sinking, rising and sinking, and in the end never rising again out of
the silence.

As the sound had receded, Richard /Rita's struggling had progres-
sively ceased. The tension holding everyone had lessened and lessened
until they realized one by one, as they lifted their heads, moved
uneasily, then looked at each other's faces, that they were standing
alone with each other in a small bedroom, that there was a curious

THE VIRGIN AND THE GIRL-FIXER 247

silence, and that their world was still right-side up. It was over. All was
well.

Gerald glanced at the psychiatrist. He was leaning back against the
wall, spectacles in one hand, while he cried unreservedly into his other
hand. "Bert, see to him, will you?" Gerald said gently.

"Leave me. Leave me be/' muttered Dr. Hammond, in between his
tears. Then he drew a deep breath: "I'm all right. Leave me be." He
walked slowly to the door, pulled it open, then half-turned and looked
back at Richard /Rita and at Gerald. He had the look of someone
unjustly hurt; and his eyes held a puzzlement and appeal. Then,
without a word, he turned and went out. He would have conversations
with Gerald later. But now he had no words. And he was tired beyond
belief.

After about 20 minutes, they lifted Richard /Rita on to the couch.
He was coming to. He motioned with his hand to Gerald. He was
obviously very weak but quite self-possessed and aware. Gerald saw
the smile in his eyes and faintly at the corners of his mouth.

"Father, I have not felt so restful and so light in ten years. I . . ."

"No need to say much now, Rita," said Gerald.

"But, Father Gerald, I . . . T am happy for the first time for a long
time."

"We'll talk about it later," Gerald said, smiling through his pain; he
was bleeding again and his pelvis was riven with an aching soreness.
He straightened up as much as he could, and turned to go.

"Father Gerald!" Richard /Rita struggled up and leaned on one
elbow. He was looking out the window. "I am . . . I . . . please
. . . call me Richard. Richard I was born. Richard I will die." He
glanced up at Gerald. "The rest of it" — his gaze traveled down over
his body — "for the rest of it, let's rely on God and — and Jesus." He
paused and looked away as if remembering or trying to remember
something. Then, looking again at Gerald, "Father, they told me . . .
or I heard them say — I don't know which — there isn't much time . . .
you know . . ." He broke off lamely.

"I know, Richard," Gerald said trying to smile, but feeling the lead
weight inside him. Somewhere deep in his belly a gray slug was eating
his vitals. And somewhere in his heart, a lump of coldness had taken
up residence. "I know. I have known for quite a while. I know. It's all
right. It was my own choice."

Outside on the driveway, Dr. Hammond was sitting in the driver's
seat of his car waiting. The engine was already started.

248 THE CASES

"Going to be a very wet night, Father Gerald," he said. Despite the
strain, there was a note of cordiality and respect Gerald had not
noticed before. "Let me drop you on my way to the office. I must get
my report on tape tonight before I forget anything. They can type it
up tomorrow."

Gerald slid in painfully beside him and waved goodbye to Jasper,
who had been helping him.

"Tell me, Dr. Hammond," he said chattily as they swung out on to
the main road, "do you believe in the Devil?"

Uncle Ponto and
the Mushroom-Souper

"Uncle Ponto!" Jamsie screamed in fury as he reached for the door of
his apartment. "Uncle Ponto! This time, I'll do it. By Jesus, I'll do it.
You'll see! Ill do it." He banged the door after him. As he scrambled
down the steps into the street and fumbled with the car key, he
muttered angrily: "That does it — permanently, eh? That does it. I'll fix
you, you little bastard."

Jamsie was shaking all over his tall, raw-boned frame. He was
gripped by a sense of frustration that put him almost out of control of
himself. His reddish hair and high complexion had always been
startling for people. But now his cadaverous face was flushed with
passion, his eyes were blazing. His appearance must have been
frightening.

In a few moments he was at the wheel. Fumbling and cursing, he
got the car started, made a quick, jerky U-turn, and was immediately
off gathering speed as he headed away from San Francisco.

Jamsie was seething with an accumulated rage so great that he
continued to shake. He had put up with Uncle Ponto's annoyances for
over six years. Finally he had had enough. Even though Ponto had left
him alone a lot of the time, and even though he had been able to sleep
in peace in his own apartment at night until fairly recently, and even
though he had at times even relished the eerie company of Ponto and
got a kick out of their encounters, nevertheless, on this early Saturday
morning, he had had enough. Ponto wanted to move in completely and
permanently and immediately, to take him over, him and his entire

25O THE CASES

life. And something had broken inside Jamsie. He had to finish the
whole thing now.

''You won't bother me any more. You'll get off my ass. You'll ..."

Jamsie's voice trailed off. A glance in the rearview mirror was
enough: Uncle Ponto was on the back seat, that same uncouth smirk
on his face that always enraged Jamsie.

"I told you before," Jamsie shouted violently into the mirror, "that
is a dirty smile. A pigs smile! A foul, swinish smile!" Then in a sudden
excess of anger and frustration: "Hell! Hell! Hell!" He paused to
negotiate a corner. "Hell again! Now you've asked for it, Ponto. This is
it."

He lapsed into silence, breathing heavily, and drove on. Now and
again he shot a furtive glance into the rearview mirror to reassure
himself that Ponto was still there. Jamsie could see the squarish head
ending in what was almost a point, the narrow forehead with the tiny
zigzag eyebrows slanting upward, the large, bulbous eyes with the
whites so reddened that you could hardly distinguish them from the
deeply pink irises. And Ponto 's nose and mouth and chin — what there
was of chin — had always reminded Jamsie of a long, thin pencil stuck
in a very ungainly Idaho potato.

Ponto's face looked as if it had been put together in the dark by
several people working at cross-purposes, with each part coming from
a different face. No one part really matched another part. Even his
face color, a brownish-black, clashed with his sparse blond hair, which
sat like a cheap toupee on top of that peculiar pointed head.

He would have been comic-looking — and Jamsie sometimes had a
good laugh at his facial characteristics — were it not for the normal
expression on Ponto's face. For it was in no way the comic face of a
circus clown, in which irregularity and human feeling combined to
give a sense of pathos. Ponto's was a caricature of a human face.
Where the clown's face read: "Laugh! But know that I mirror the
helplessness of us all," Ponto's face read: "Don't laugh! But do despair,
because I mirror the real absurdity of you all." And what really
prevented Jamsie from any constant amusement about Ponto's face
was the thick transformation through which it could pass. At times it
did not look human at all. It was something else for which Jamsie had
no name — neither animal nor human nor even a nightmare face born
in bad dreams or shown in the Chamber of Horrors.

"All I'm asking for, all I ever asked for," Jamsie remembers Uncle
Ponto saying softly sometime later, as they drove onto Highway 101,

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 251

"is that you let me come and live with you. I won't be in the way. You
need a friend like me."

Jamsie snorted with rage; his steering became erratic for a moment.

"You see," Ponto continued in his primest tones. "You see! You
shouldn't have got so upset. You're not as good a driver as your father,
Ara, was."

"Leave my father out of this," Jamsie grated.

Ponto's voice was something else again. Never loud, even when
Ponto was screaming, it had a painful effect most of the time. It left
ringing echoes inside Jamsie's hearing, so that any kind of extended
conversation with Ponto ended up in jabbing earaches.

As a matter of fact, Ponto had only started to bother him long after
his father's gradual degeneration from self-supporting artisan to New
York hack driver to part-time pimp to dope peddler. Yes, and long
after his mother's taking to prostitution on New York streets as a last,
desperate means of livelihood.

Leave them out of this, Jamsie thought silently. What lay between
himself and Uncle Ponto was entirely personal.

In brief, Jamsie had had enough of Uncle Ponto's harassment. Two
years of sudden appearances morning, noon, and night, and of
uninvited interventions that had wrecked his personal life, all this had
finally become too much. In the beginning Jamsie had even welcomed
Ponto's unpredictable antics. They had provided some relief to his
boredom. At times he had been amused, stimulated, even bettered and
helped in various practical difficulties. And, after years of creeping
horror prior to Ponto's first appearance, years of being pursued by
strange, intangible threats, Ponto was at least a visible butt for Jamsie's
general anger at life and at people — and at himself. But that had been
merely the beginning.

It might have continued like that if Ponto had not changed his tack.
But, after a while, Jamsie had found that Uncle Ponto was pressuring
him. From being an occasional visitor and companion, Ponto had
started to assume the role and privileges of a familiar, a close associate,
an intimate friend. It was only then that Jamsie had received the full
blast of Ponto's twisted personality. And it had been too much for
Jamsie.

They were coming up to San Jose. Ponto had started to speak again.
But Jamsie had been taken in by Ponto's put-ons before. He clamped
his lips tight, resolved to give Ponto the old silent treatment. It had
occasionally worked in the past.

252 THE CASES

Jamsie had heard it all before: what Ponto thought of his father and
mother; how he, Jamsie, should stay away from women and liquor
("Women are death," Ponto dinned into him; ''booze makes you
easygoing"); who really was Jamsie's friend in this life — Ponto himself,
or people like Lila Wood, Jamsie's onetime girlfriend, and Lila's
friend, Father Mark. On Ponto rambled.

Jamsie had just passed San Jose and entered Highway 52, and was
heading eastward to Hollister. Ponto's tone took on a note of suspicion.

"You told me you didn't like San Benito County, Jamsie!" A pause.
"Jamsie!"

Jamsie kept his eyes glued to the road.

Ponto changed his tone. Now he was wheedling. "Just sa Y' Yes,'
Jamsie." Ponto was almost plaintive. "Just say, 'Yes.' You've no idea
... I don't want to go back . . . All those homes up there ..."
Jamsie glanced up at the houses dotting the hillsides. "There's no
welcome for me up there in spite of their boozing and bitching and
despair."

With no reaction or answering word from Jamsie, Ponto fell silent.
Jamsie stared ahead. Another long silence.

Sometime later, as Jamsie turned south on Highway 25 into the San
Benito River Valley, a sardonic smile crept involuntarily across his
mouth. I'll show you, he was thinking. You little sonavabitch. This will
rid me of you, get it all over with, once and for all.

Uncle Ponto was agog again. He was becoming frantic.

"Jamsie, you're opaque to me now. Stop THAT! You hear me! Stop
THAT! I'm getting bad vibes, very bad vibes. All darkness and fog."

The memory of Lila's friend, Father Mark, came back to Jamsie
again. "Mushroom -Souper," that's what Ponto had derisively nick-
named Father Mark. On the one evening Jamsie had visited with the
priest, Mark had treated him to mushroom soup made from his own
recipe. Afterward, Jamsie had talked with him into the small hours of
the morning, telling him of his early life, of Ponto's harassment, and of
his own deep despair and continual rage against life. Mark seemed to
understand much more than he was able to explain to Jamsie. But
several times during that conversation, Jamsie had found himself
incapable of going along with what Mark proposed: to get rid of Uncle
Ponto. Always, at that point, Jamsie felt an unaccountable fear. If
Ponto no longer existed in his life, what would happen? It was just as
if Ponto represented some security or as if in some way or other he had
given his word to Ponto.

UNCLE PONTO AND .THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 253

He glanced at Ponto in the rearview mirror. Ponto was leering
contentedly. The sight of that gash Ponto passed off as a smile roused
Jamsie's anger again. He could not restrain himself.

" You're the son of the Father of Lies!" he shouted poisonously at
Ponto. "That's what Mark said Jesus called him ..."

Jamsie's ears were split by a high-pitched scream from Ponto.
"DON'T!" Ponto shouted. "Don't mention that person's name in my
presence. Don't mention THAT!" Ponto's queer face was contorted in
utter misery.

There was silence for a while. Jamsie glanced at either side. How
happy he had been here in this countryside with his father for a few
days of a childhood visit years before. Eastward stood the Diablo
Range — an ironic touch to the situation, Jamsie thought. To the west
ran the Gabilan Range. Ahead lay the Pinnacles National Monument.
They should arrive within an hour at the park.

Got to get it over with, Jamsie began saying to himself over and over
again. But, as the memories of his childhood happiness passed before
his mind, he began to wonder. Got to free myself, he found himself
thinking. Got to rid myself of this "familiar," got to free. But Ponto
started to chatter again and interrupted his thoughts.

Every time he started to think, really to think, Ponto would
interrupt. That, he realized, was what capped his resolution to end it
all: this perpetual muzzling of his thoughts and feelings. When Ponto
talked in his strange way, his words seemed to drown all of Jamsie's
thinking. He could not think or feel.

Jamsie pressed down on the accelerator. He had to get to the
Pinnacles.

Then, without warning, pain blocked his memories and dulled all
thought. He felt the pressure inside his chest. He had experienced it
before when trying to resist Ponto. It began at his rib cage just beneath
his skin; and, as it had during the last few weeks, it started to contract
inward toward the center of his body. It seemed to be pulling at his
brain trying to force it down his spinal column.

All Jamsie could think of was the counterstratagems Mark had tried
to teach him that evening.

"Jesus," he muttered under his breath.

Then he began to spell the word out letter by letter. "J-E-S-U-S,
J-E-S-U-S, J-E-S-U-S." About 20 times. Next he spelt the name out by
running down the alphabet from A to J, from A to E, from A to S, from
A to U, from A to S. Then he started all over again.

254 THE CASES

He did not do this as a prayer. He had been taught it by Father
Mark as a means of blocking Ponto's influence.

The internal pressure started to lessen. He could breathe again.

"Jamsie," came the horrified squawk of Uncle Ponto. "You know I
don't like that. I don't like that at all. You know very well. I can't
stand that. Stop it this minute, or I can't go on. You will lose me, you
hear. You will lose me."

Jamsie started laughing, first of all quietly in his throat, then
uncontrollably out loud.

"My friends and relatives won't like this at all," squeaked Ponto,
voice high-pitched, elbows beating against his sides, hands wringing in
the air. Jamsie laughed and laughed. This was what he used to call
Ponto's "duck fit."

At least that worked, he thought. He did not know why that name
disturbed Ponto. But Jamsie laughed from sheer relief nearly all of the
next 32 miles. He had a pain from laughing. He was profoundly
relieved to have got the best of Ponto for now, at least.

At times he stopped laughing when his thoughts became grim.
Then, catching sight of Uncle Ponto's pointy little skull, heavy lids,
and chinless face covered with that fretfulness of Ponto's "duck fit,"
he would start laughing again.

At the gate of Pinnacles National Monument the ranger took his
money. Jamsie parked the car beside the Visitor's Monument, bought a
map and a flashlight, and set off across the chaparral of Pygmy Forest.
He knew where he wanted to go. And he was almost jubilant. But
immediately Uncle Ponto was by his side. Jamsie now paid no
attention to him. Something in the air exhilarated him. He felt freer
than he had for a long time. He started to walk quickly. "Reservoir,
here I come!" he hummed to the tune of "California, Here I Come!"

Ponto started to wheedle him again. "Jamsie, sit down a moment.
Smell the hollyleaf cherry, the manzanita, these wild flowers. Sit down
and rest a while. You were told to watch your heart. You're my
investment. You're home for me. You're not going to walk all nine
miles up and down, are you? Please! Jamsie! Please stop and talk it
over with me. Please!"

Jamsie kept on. As he started to climb up to Bear Gulch Caves, he
opened the map.

"It's no use, Jamsie," said Ponto. "I tell you, it's no use."

Jamsie turned his back on Ponto, searching the map for his way to

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 255

the reservoir. But Ponto was up to his tricks again. Every time Jamsie's
eyes and finger came near that name on the map, the name shifted. It
shifted and sidestepped and dodged him, zigzagging across the map.

Jamsie began to get angry and then fearful. He slammed the map
onto a flat rock and plunged his finger at "Reservoir." But it was too
late. "Reservoir" slipped off the map and shot up into the sky over his
shoulder.

Jamsie sprang up, cursing and hurling profanities at the blue sky
where the word "Reservoir" danced and flowed around like a pennant
towed by an invisible airplane. He swayed as he squinted up.
Suddenly, "Reservoir, here I come" danced around in the sky. Then a
whole skyful of dancing words spelled out letter by letter — and
backwards: S-U-S-E-J, E-I-S-M-A-J, S-U-S-E-J, E-I-S-M-A-J.

Jamsie stamped on the ground. He was violently angry again. "To
Hell with you and your tricks, you filthy brute. To Hell with you and
your tricks . . ."

But he only heard the echo of his own shout and knew he was alone.
He looked up. All was quiet. The sky was clear and blue. There was no
trace of Uncle Ponto. The dancing letters were no more. He was alone.

He grabbed the map and stumbled on. Now his mind was made up.

After another half mile, Jamsie entered Bear Gulch Caves. He had
been here about 20 years before with his father, and his memory
started to serve him.

Halfway up through the narrow corridor of the cave, he began to
hear more than his own footsteps. At first, it was the splashing of
unseen cascades and the gurgling of underground streams. But quickly
he began to realize a voice was becoming audible. It was Ponto's, of
course.

"Jamsie, you know I will have to give an accounting for all this
foolishness. I am responsible."

The voice came from above. Jamsie pointed the flashlight to the
roof. Long ago some huge blocks of rock had fallen across a narrow
fissure in the canyon wall and stuck there, closing it from the light of
day and forming a roof. Ponto was dangling in between two of those
rocks, his eyes glittering with malice. "Oh! I'm here all right."

"What the . . ." Jamsie was about to erupt; then all the fight
drained out of him. He suddenly felt weak and helpless. In a sort of
desperation, he started to run and stumble through pools of water and
over rocks, wetting his feet and scraping his shins and ankles. Behind

256 THE CASES

him, always near, came Ponto's mocking voice: "This can only end
badly, Jamsie, if you keep on like this. Yon have to come back to me in
the long run, you know. You can't do without me now. Not now!"

That "Not now" pursued Jamsie in a thousand echoes. It increased
his panic and his need for flight.

Then he saw glimmers of daylight ahead of him. He scurried on,
pursued by Ponto's voice echoing from every cranny. Finally he
clambered up the last few rock steps cut out of the cave walls, and into
the sunlight. Ponto's voice seemed to die away into the darkness he
had just left. He was out of breath, perspiring from every pore, and
shaking. He had bruised his elbows, knees, and ankles. His hair had
fallen over his eyes.

But the sight now before him was a sudden distraction from his
panic: the reservoir, calm, blue, unruffled, glasslike, without the
merest ripple. And reflected in its face were the brown and gray and
black spires and pinnacles of the surrounding land, undisturbed images
intertwined with the greens and ashen-whites of the vegetation. It was
a perfectly still mirror world in which the only movement came from
the few clusters of utterly white clouds reflected from the sky. There
was no sound whatever from the great things around him. Distance
was telescoped. Time paused for him.

Then, in a little inner explosion of a new panic, Jamsie noticed the
Shadow over to his right. A tall finger of brown-gray crag jutted out of
the cliff wall over there. The Shadow stood beneath it and out of the
glare of the sunlight.

Over on his left Ponto's exasperated voice called out from the cave
mouth: "Well, if you have to do it, get on with it. Get it over with! Go
on, Jamsie! An ideal place for it!"

Jamsie glanced over at the Shadow. In the darkness beneath the
crag he thought he saw a movement, like someone sighing with relief
that the desired end was near.

Ponto's voice struck at him again: "Go on, fool! Jump! They tell me
it's okay now. Jump!"

As Ponto's voice died away, the Shadow moved beneath the crag
ever so slightly. It might have been bending forward a little in order to
follow more closely what Jamsie was about to do. Its outline, still dim,
became more visible in its general details.

What Jamsie now found strange was his own lack of rage and fear.
For the first time in three years, he felt neither. Instead, he felt that
relief and easement of body and mind somehow akin to what you

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 257

experience when you fill your lungs with air, after having held your
breath to the point of suffocation. Why am I calm now? was the
question he put himself.

He turned his head and gazed at the Shadow, as if he knew the
answer to that question lay in its direction. That question and others
were agonizing. His eyes calmly bored into the darkness surrounding
the shape.

In the few moments before the Shadow slipped back into obscurity,
Jamsie had enough time. The face, the head, the way it stood, all the
details began to fall into place for his memory. The Shadow was tall,
abnormally tall. And bulky. The body was covered in black folds. He
could see the two arms raised at the elbows, the palms of the hands
turned out toward him, the fingers clenching and unclenching. The
head was lifted up, thrown back, as it were, in a fixed haughtiness, a
resisting pride. Dimly he could make out eyes, nose, mouth.

The shape of that face riveted Jamsie's attention. It had all the
details of a human face. Yet it was not human. It was something else.
Where had he seen it? That face had been with him all his conscious
life, even in his childhood and during his teens. And from the first day
he had taken a job. Sure, it was Ponto's face. There was something of
his father's face there, too, the face Ara had late at night when he was
on a "job." And others he had once seen but had now forgotten. Many
others.

It all took a few quick moments. As the Shadow receded noiselessly
into the darkness beneath the crag, Jamsie became conscious of
another element in himself. It was a tiny voice of instinct, a primal
part of him still alive and vibrant. He knew he had seen the father of
all man's real enemies. The Father of Lies and the ultimate adversary
of all salvation, of any beauty, of each truth throughout the cosmos of
God's working.

Beneath the crag there was suddenly only darkness. Jamsie's eyes
fell away from the Shadow's hiding place. His thoughts came back to
the reservoir.

He looked at the smiling calm of the waters and up to the North
Chalone peak. He remembered what his father had said to him when
they had looked at it together years before: someday he would climb
all 3,305 feet of it. Waters and peak were clean — wholesome in some
way Jamsie could not explain but did feel intensely. He could not, he
thought to himself now, he could not soil them with his own dead and
bloated body floating face down, its back to the peak, its juices

258 THE CASES

polluting the water. Just the thought now made him feel uncouth,
almost sacrilegious.

He looked away quickly from the clear surface of the reservoir. He
stood stock-still. His mind was blank, his eyes, unseeing. He no longer
desired to end it all here. But he could not think either of returning to
the increasing torture of life with Ponto. "1 have no desires at all," he
thought helplessly. Then, as though pointing out to himself something
he could not quite grasp, he repeated again and again: "I'm in shock.
I'm in shock."

Ponto broke in peevishly: "You can do nothing, desire nothing, are
nothing — except a human wreck about to kill yourself." Then
viciously: "You" — a long drawn-out pause — "are finished" — again the
cruel pause — "dead already, but you don't know it." A short pause.
Then, like a pistol shot: "Jump!"

Jamsie did not budge, did not even shake or move. He was certain
that Ponto lied. He knew that his will was not helpless, although he
did not know what to do. He knew now that preserved in him was a
deep desire stronger than any other. He felt tears coming to his eyes;
and he knew those tears were forced from him by that deep, deep
desire.

Alarm entered Ponto's voice again. "Jamsie! Be a man. Get it over
with!"

Jamsie looked over his shoulder at the Shadow's hiding place. It had
not gone. It seemed to have lost its undulating ease and draped
complacency, to have gone rigid in some way he could not fathom.

Then Ponto started to chant in his eunuch's voice: "Jump-uh!
Jump-uh! Jump-uh! Jump-uh!"

The words with their rhythmic extra beat hit Jamsie painfully as
hailstones lashing his ears. He sought some escape, some gimmick to
block those quick, stinging blows.

"Jump-uh! Jump-uh! Jump-uh!" went Ponto's voice in a high,
spiraling tone, speaking quicker and quicker.

Jamsie's thoughts started to go awry. The torment of that voice was
becoming too much. He remembered Father Mark and his instruc-
tions. The trick, that was it! The trick! He began desperately spelling
out the name of Jesus again and again: J-E-S-U-S. J-E-S-U-S.
J-E-S-U-S. Then he ran all the letters together like an incantation —
J-E-S-U-S-J-E-S-U-S-J-E-S-U-S.

But now, he found, those letters and their piecemeal pronunciation
meant more to him than a gimmick. The pain of Ponto's chanting

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 259

diminished. Jamsie's tears flowed more sweetly, more as a relief than a
gesture of suffering.

The tears blurred everything as he threw one more glance at the sky
and the water, then heard himself break the silence of all nature,
shouting, "Father Mark! Father Mark!" He shouted the name over and
over. The echoes came back at him from all sides, from above and
below, Father, Father, Father . . . Mark, Mark, Mark, and died away
over the rocks and pinnacles.

He stepped back a little, then a little more, then some more, away
from the edge of the reservoir. He turned back, looking toward the
cave mouth and then at the Shadow. He realized he would have to
pass by them both if he returned to the Monument Gate by Bear
Gulch Caves.

The echoes died away. The Shadow beneath the crag had dwindled
into itself and was almost indistinguishable again from the darkness
beneath the crag. There was no sound from Ponto.

In the silence, Jamsie turned around and stumbled off down by the
Moses Spring Trail, hugging the walls of the canyon. He was alone all
the way down. The two hours of respite were welcome. When he
arrived in full view of the parking lot, he was still saying two names,
Jesus and Mark, over and over again to himself.

The ranger looked up from the magazine he was reading. "Need any
help, buddy? You look beat."

"The phone. May I use the phone?"

Within a few minutes Jamsie was talking with Father Mark. "Stay
where you are, Jamsie," Father Mark told him. "Don't drive back,
whatever you do. Wait for me."

That evening Jamsie returned with Mark to San Francisco. They
spoke little on the way. As they approached the rectory, Mark sensed a
new unrest in Jamsie.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"Ponto. He hasn't said a word. He hasn't appeared. I wonder
if . . ."

"Don't. Just don't." Mark spoke firmly. Then he added drily, "Your
old Uncle Ponto couldn't sit in this car."

Jamsie nodded. But he remained uneasy.

As they entered the rectory, Jamsie was not sure if for one moment
he had not seen Ponto inside the gateway. The shadows cast by the
street lamps were playing against the gate pillars and seemed to be a
rustling cover for some rigid forms towering above him, leaning

26o THE CASES

forward in an askew fashion, watching his every move, waiting for
some moment of their choosing.

JAMSIE Z.

The case of Jamsie Z. presents us with an almost open-and-shut
example of what used to be called "familiarization" or possession by a
"familiar spirit" in the classical terminology of diabolic possession. I
say "almost" because, in Jamsie Z.'s case, "familiarization" was never
completed. Jamsie resisted, was exorcised, and the intending "familiar
spirit" was driven out of his life.

"Familiarization" is a type of possession in which the possessed is
not normally subject to the conditions of physical violence, repugnant
smells and behavior, social aberrations, and personal degeneracy that
characterize other forms of possession.

The possessing spirit in "familiarization" is seeking to "come and
live with" the subject. If accepted, the spirit becomes the constant and
continuously present companion of the possessed. The two "persons,"
the familiar and the possessed, remain separate and distinct. The
possessed is aware of his familiar. In fact, no movement of body, no
pain or pleasure, and no thought or memory occur that is not shared
with the familiar. All privacy of the subject is gone; his very thoughts
are known; and he knows continually that they are known by his
familiar. The subject himself can even benefit from whatever pre-
science and insight his familiar enjoys.

Although there was a definite connection between certain events
and traits of his childhood and the experience that culminated in his
exorcism, it was only after the age of thirty that he was openly
approached by a "familiar" spirit and proffered "familiarization."
From the age of thirty-four onwards he was subjected to multiple
forms of persuasion by the spirit calling itself Uncle Ponto. But
Jamsie's case does illustrate many of the traits of "familiarization" and
the inherent dangers for those who give even a token consent to
"familiarization."

Jamsie was born in Ossining, New York. His father, Ara, was of
Armenian descent; his mother, Lydia, was of Greek descent. Both
were third-generation Americans. Ara was a carpenter by trade, and

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 26 1

played the clarinet in his spare time in order to earn extra money.
Lydia belonged to a Boston family whose large fortune had been made
in ship chandlering and on the stock market.

Lydia saw Ara for the first time at a small evening concert in Glen
Ridge, New York. Improbable as it seemed to her family, she fell in
love with Ara then and there. And Ara with her. On Lydia's
eighteenth birthday they were married, over the violent objections of
her family. Even the threat of being disowned and cut off entirely from
the family fortune could not stop Lydia.

Jamsie was born one year later, in 1923. The family lived in Ossining
for another five years. But by 1929 Ara and Lydia had decided to move
to New York. He was not making enough money in Ossining. Lydia's
mother and father were pestering Lydia to desert Ara and to return to
the family with her son. New York, Ara and Lydia thought, would
provide more work for Ara and a greater anonymity for the three of
them. Ara had a letter of recommendation to a taxicab-fleet owner. He
and Lydia had high hopes of success in the city.

In October 1929 the family moved to New York, taking with them
some blankets, kitchen utensils, Ara's clarinet, and an old family icon
of the Virgin that Ara's father had left him in his will. They first lived
in a three-room walk-up in Penn Street. After a year they moved to a
two-room apartment at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. There they
lived until Ara died in 1939.

Lydia, once more living in a big metropolis, wrote out a memento of
their arrival in large black letters and hung it beside the old icon on
their living-room wall: "Today, our first day in New York, George
Whitney bid 204 for U. S. Steel." It hung there beside the icon for
years; and these two objects were the center of Jamsie 's earliest
recollections.

But the golden age of New York which had begun at the end of the
Civil War was just coming to its close, although few guessed its
imminent collapse. New York's strength and prestige as the source of
funds and leadership for the nation had been established in that
64 -year period: great New York fortunes were made; famous New
York homes were built by a Brokaw, a Dodge, a Carnegie, a
Stuyvesant, a Whitney, a Vanderbilt, a Frick, a Harkness, the city's big
financial district was created to sell the country all kinds of services.
After World War I, most of New York's energies were turned toward
Europe. But the old leadership was gone, and New York's manufaetur-

262 THE CASES

ing declined. As one writer put it, the financial soul of New York
"worked itself up into a lather of paper profits and then collapsed."
Ara and Lydia arrived just in time for that collapse.

Nevertheless, their first seven years in New York were relatively
happy ones. Ara did not immediately use his recommendation to the
taxicab-fleet owner. Instead, he worked as a handyman and carpenter,
first around his own neighborhood, and then venturing down around
Washington Square and up as far as Yorkville. Lydia at first stayed at
home with their young child. Then, as Jamsie started parochial school,
Lydia took a daytime job in an Armenian laundry.

In the opinion of the present writer, the New York which Jamsie
knew from his earliest years had something rather intangible but
definite to do with his later experience of attempted "familiarization."
Between 1820 and 1930, over 38 million people had immigrated to the
United States, and a good one-sixth of these had stayed in New York.
The doormat for those "ragged remnants" was the Lower East Side.

New York was then a city of nearly seven million, with 25 foreign
languages in daily use and 200 foreign-language newspapers and
magazines to satisfy the needs of this heterogeneous population. "No
one can become an American except by God's grace," wrote I. A. R.
Wylie in the early 1930s. And, for the long-standing Yankee Protestant
Establishment, New York, which was in the first third of the twentieth
century five-sevenths Italian, Jewish, German, Irish, Hungarian,
Armenian, Greek, Russian, Syrian, and otherwise foreign, was not
American. The felt differences between the Establishment and the
newly arrived was more than ethnic. The Establishment had adopted
none of the ancient gods of the New World; they had imported their
Christianity, which had no roots in pre-Columbian history. The
millions of immigrants came from lands where their religion (mainly
Christianity, with Jewish and Muslim minorities) had its roots deep in
ancient pre-Christian cults. European and Middle Eastern pagan
instincts were never rooted out; they were adopted, sublimated,
purified, transmuted. In that mildewed baggage of morals, ritual
practices, folk mores, social and familial traditions, the new Americans
surely transported the seeds and traces of ancient, far-off powers and
spirits which once had held sway over the Old World.

Jamsie's childhood until he was nine passed without any serious
disruption. Home life was orderly and secure. Mornings and evenings
he ate with his parents. Most evenings, Ara would take out the clarinet
and play for his wife and child. Every night, as a small child, Jamsie

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 263

knelt with his mother in front of the ikon and said the night prayers
she had taught him, while he looked into the wide eyes of the Virgin.

His father took him to ball games and boxing matches. Some
Sundays they went roller-skating down Wall Street; at other times to
the zoo, or for nickel rides on the Staten Island ferry; and two or three
times a year he took Jamsie for a swim in a hotel pool. In the summer
months there were all-day outings to Coney Island.

The three of them left New York only once. It was a week's vacation
in San Francisco made possible by a gift of money from Lydia's
parents. Jamsie never forgot the outings on that trip with his father,
and their evening meals at Fisherman's Wharf, and the day's visit they
made to Pinnacles National Monument.

As Jamsie grew up, he gradually moved around the East Side and
got to know and like its ethnic mix, its smells, sounds, and sights. In
the early morning he picked his way to school past windows stuffed
with bedding and fire escapes where people were still sleeping. As he
wandered home, his ears were filled with the medley of dialects used
by pushcart peddlers and shopkeepers — Tuscan, Serbian, Yiddish,
Ruthenian, Sicilian, Croatian, Cretan, Macedonian.

Jamsie was in his tenth year when his parents began to notice a
strange trouble that seized him from time to time. Sometimes, among
the clutter of plaster saints, brass pots, secondhand garments, Balkan
stogies, mezuzahs, and other bric-a-brac that filled the shop windows,
Jamsie caught sight of what he called a "funny-lookin' face" or "a face
with a funny look." Then he was seized with a violent fright and
literally fled home in a blind panic. He used to arrive white-faced and
trembling at Lydia's side. She always knew what had happened — or so
Jamsie thought — and she was able to calm him down and still his fears.

As he grew older, the ' 'funny face" incidents became rarer, but they
never totally disappeared. As a child, he was never able to describe
that "face" to his parents. They, wisely, never insisted on details. But
from what they could understand, it seemed the child's terror was
caused, not by any particular ugliness in the "face," but chiefly
because of the curious conviction Jamsie had that the "face" knew him
personally. "It looks at me and it knows me. It does!" he used to sob to
his mother.

Gradually Jamsie worked out a sort of home geography for himself.
He made many friends among the Hungarians living between 82nd
and 73rd Streets. His father had distant relatives living there; and once
a month or so, Jamsie visited them and was fed on goose-liver paste,

264 THE CASES

stuffed cabbage, and chicken paprika. He skipped the neighborhood of
the Bohunks (Czechs and Slovaks), who lived just below the Hun-
garians.

For it was lower down on Lexington Avenue, between 30th and
22nd Streets among the Armenians, and with the Greeks in the West
30s and 40s that he felt at home. He spoke a little of both languages.
His boyhood friends were there, and he was never frightened when
with Greeks and Armenians. He never saw his "funny face" among
them.

In the late spring of 1937, when Jamsie was fourteen years old, Ara
made an important decision that ended forever the happy days of
Jamsie's childhood. Ara was not earning enough money as a handy-
man-carpenter, so he utilized that old but carefully guarded recom-
mendation to a taxieab-fleet owner. Very shortly afterwards, he
became one of approximately 25,000 licensed hacks in the city. He
drove a two-year-old Y-model Checker for Burmalee System, Inc.
Jamsie was very proud at first of his father's cab with its silver roof and
the black-and-white checker band running around the middle of its
yellow body.

Ara worked a 12-hour shift, driving approximately 50 miles a day to
service 12 to 15 calls. On a good day he might bring home $3.00 from
the meter and $1.25 in tips. It was no good. The constant sitting at the
wheel, the endless war with the New York policemen, who were out to
eliminate cruising cabs, the weariness at the end of each grueling day,
the small earnings brought in by this labor, all produced a change in
Ara which alienated him from Lydia and frightened Jamsie.

He no longer played the clarinet for them in the evenings; he locked
his "old stick/' as he called it, in a drawer of the living-room bureau.
There were no more family outings. Instead of the occasional game of
pinochle and hearts with some friends, he stayed out late drinking with
other cabbies. He developed ulcers, spent two weeks in the hospital
with kidney trouble in November 1938, and had a back condition
before the end of the year.

For a while, only his language grew coarser for Jamsie — "palooka"
(a cheap fare), "high booker" (a big fare), "rips" (fares over $2), and so
on were his father's new expressions. But matters got worse. At the
beginning, Jamsie and Lydia took turns keeping Ara company as he
cruised long hours in his cab. When Lydia found out that Ara had
fallen into the easy money of occasional pimping, steering out-of-town
clients to hotels and parlor houses for a percentage of the "take," she

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 265

forbade Jamsie to go with Ara at night. But Jamsie, by now a boy of
very strong will, disobeyed.

Now and then, as he sat beside Ara in the cab, Jamsie was struck by
some trait in his father's face. Once, while he sat in the cab late at
night and his father was chatting on the curb with a pimp and two of
his girls, Jamsie thought he saw that trait on all four faces as they
laughed together as at some joke.

The "look" did not frighten him, but it repelled him. At the same
time he was fascinated by it. As time went on, he deliberately looked
for it. He found, however, that he only noticed it when he did not look
for it. It was as elusive as ever; he could not pin it down.

At times that "look" acquired a terrible intensity. Two related
incidents that happened in 1938 stand out in Jamsie's memory.

With his father and some friends he had gone to see the Brooklyn
Dodgers play. It was at a moment toward the end of the game when
all the fans were on their feet cheering Cincinnati's Johnny Vander
Meer, who was making baseball history by pitching his second
successive no-hit, no-run game. Shouting and cheering like everyone
else, Jamsie looked around at the excited crowds. And from deep in
the middle of the faces there leaped out at him that "funny-lookin'
face." It was looking at him. It knew him, he thought. He froze into
silence and looked away in panic. Then he glanced back at the spot
where he had seen it, but it was gone. All he could see were the fans
shouting and gesticulating.

Exactly one week later Jamsie was sitting with Ara in the cab late
one night listening to the Louis-Schmelling fight. As the fight reached
its climax, Ara's face became more and more contorted. In the last few
moments leading up to Joe Louis' victory, Jamsie saw on his father's
face a very intense look which was quickly developing into that "funny
look." There was, again, something unhuman about it; and he could
not catch sight of any trait which he had always associated with his
father's beloved face. With each of Louis' blows to Schmelling, and as
the voice of the announcer got higher and more excited, the "look"
became more apparent on Ara's face. With the gong and Louis'
victory, the tension broke. The strange look passed quickly, and Ara
became normal and composed again. But Jamsie could not forget the
incident.

As time passed, his fear of the "look" began to lessen, but his
curiosity was greater. What was that "look"? And how was it that he
had seen it at the ball game and then again on his own father's face,

266 THE CASES

blotting out the kindness and love Jamsie had known there all his life
up to that point? And what connection was there between all that and
the "look" or "funny-lookin' face" he used to see as a child?

Around this time the family reached a low in its fortunes and
well-being. Ara was developing a serious drinking problem, and the
more he drank, the less money he brought home. Lydia, at first frantic
about their needs, finally became morose and gathered into herself.
Her young son was beginning to grow up. She began to feel alienated
from him and Ara.

Jamsie had already been hired as a pageboy by NBC. He left school
to take the position, partly in order to bring in more money to his
home, partly with the intention of pursuing a career in radio. In the
early days of radio, NBC hired young men as pageboys for a two-year
apprenticeship, then graduated them to guides, and afterward trained
them in some branch of the flourishing radio business.

Things went from bad to worse for the family. There was no longer
enough food in the house. Lydia was always in arrears with the rent.
And, unknown to Jamsie but with Ara's consent, Lydia made her
decision. Jamsie found out about it late one night in March when he
returned from work at about 11:00 p.m.

At home, to his surprise, he found his mother dressed in her best
clothes. Her face was heavily made up. She was sitting in the living
room gazing silently out the window into the night. When he came in,
she did not turn around or say a word to him. But he knew she had
something to tell him. As he waited, his eye was drawn to the old icon
hanging on the wall behind Lydia. She had draped a black cloth over
it. He looked from the ikon to his mother and back again several times
before he understood that she was going to become one of the
prostitutes he had seen his father introducing to clients.

Lydia stood up then, as if she had heard him thinking. She knew he
had realized what was happening. "I'll be late, Jamsie. Don't wait up
for me." He said nothing.

When she had gone, he sat down and remained there thinking for
about two hours. He knew without a doubt what his mother had in
mind. It was written all over her. But there was something else he now
knew: although he was alone as far as his mother and father were
concerned, he had the strangest feeling that he was in someone else's
company. Finally he looked around the living room slowly and then
through the window at the city.

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 267

When he went to bed, he still felt deserted by his parents, but he
was nursing some secret which he did not yet understand.

Lydia became one of about 5,000 prostitutes in New York City.
After a few weeks of lone-wolfing, she got herself put on the calling list
of a parlor house in the West 40s. Jamsie got to know her routine. She
slept during the day, rising about 5:00 p.m. If by 10:00 p.m. there were
no calls for her from her madam, she went out for the evening. She
worked Fifth and Madison Avenues between 43rd and 56th Streets.
She would stop at the better bars, do some over obvious window-shop-
ping, always on the lookout for clients. Sometimes she would give one
of her clients a call. She worked this way until dawn. Then she
returned home to sleep.

After a couple of months she became a member of Polly Adler's
parlor house on Central Park West. By that time, too, she had
established her own list of personal clients whom she called regularly.
When Polly Adler got into trouble with the authorities, Lydia simply
transferred her loyalties to another madam in the West 50s.

As Jamsie got up each morning and looked in at his mother before
he left, he found that over the months the expression on her face was
changing. Instead of the look he had always seen there, he might see
various traits of that "funny-lookin' face" of his childhood terrors. But
now there was no terror. Rather, he began to feel a strange kinship
with the look.

With the passage of time, Lydia noticed the difference in Jamsie's
reaction to her, and they established a new respect for each other.

Ara, in the meantime, still driving for Burmalee System, Inc., had
tried to move in as a steerer for crap games in the 49th Street and
Broadway area. But the territory was already controlled, and the
incumbents let him know in no uncertain terms that there was no
room for him. Then he went deep into the numbers racket and illegal
horse betting. In those times, about one million illegal bets were
placed each day in New York. There was money to be made. As a
numbers agent, he got ten percent of the take on each bet handed over
to the collector. In time he himself became a collector, delivering bets
to the central "policy" bank.

Finally Ara found a source of easy money in drug traffic. There were
between 20,000 and 25,000 heroin addicts in New York of the 1930s;
and opium dens flourished on Mott and Pell Streets, as well as in
Harlem, Times Square, and San Juan Hill. Diluted heroin was sold at

268 THE CASES

$16 to $20 an ounce. A "toy," or small tin box of opium, sold for about
$10 on the street. Reefers fetched 50^ each, or two for 254; in Harlem.

In the beginning Ara merely bought reefers in Harlem which he sold
at a profit downtown. Then he became a runner, transporting the little
packets strapped beneath his armpits. There were times during these
months when Ara — and less frequently Lydia — were so changed in
their faces and so "funny-looking" to Jamsies eyes that some of his old
fears returned momentarily.

Ara had begun to build up a clientele and make some money in the
traffic of narcotics when he seemed suddenly to go to pieces. He
became gaunt and thin. His moods were unbearable in their rages and
black depressions.

One evening, a rainy Friday late in December 1939, Ara arrived
home drenched to the skin. He had been up for three days and three
nights. His teeth were chattering. He drank more than usual. He
coughed up blood during the night. The next morning, Lydia had not
come home, and Ara was in a high fever. All the strain of seven years
suddenly broke him.

Jamsie called old Dr. Schumbard finally. He said Ara was dying of
tuberculosis. Ara refused to go into the hospital. There was nothing
Jamsie could do.

The next few days were a nightmare. Lydia did not come for the
entire weekend. Ara's fever could not be reduced. He was frequently
delirious and drank when he was not. Jamsie finally went out and
scoured all his mother's haunts until he found her. Together, they
watched over Ara, waiting for the end.

While he was sitting one evening by himself at Ara's bedside after
Lydia had gone out for a while, Jamsie had the feeling again of
someone being near him. It was not unpleasant and not at all
frightening. He recalls that his feeling was more or less pleasurable, as
if a friend or confidant had come to be with him when he had no one
else. The sensation did not last all the time, and it varied in intensity.

About eight days after he had collapsed, Ara suddenly sat up in bed
one morning and started to scream at the top of his voice: "I want my
old stick! You hear! All of you! My old stick. Just a few more hot licks!
I want my old stick!" His face was bathed in that "look."

Jamsie and Lydia tried to hold him down, but Ara fought them off.
He scrambled out of bed in his bloodstained nightshirt, hobbled into
the living room, unlocked the drawer where he had hidden his
clarinet. He took it out of its case and screwed on the mouthpiece.

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 269

"Just a few more hot licks before we kick the bucket, hen!"
gibbered Ara, spittle drooling from the corners of his mouth. The silver
stops of the clarinet twinkled in the sunlight.

"Me old stick!" Jamsie heard him mumble.

Ara blew a few uncertain notes, tried some scales, went into a few
bars of the upper register, then low down, all the time gaining fullness
of tone and sureness.

As Jamsie and his mother watched, Ara began to adlib some blues.
He tottered and stumbled unsteadily around the room, scraping over
the worn carpet, bumping into furniture. He paused for a moment in
front of Lydia's handwritten memento and cackled at it derisively.
Then, playing again, he stumbled away and then back, until he stood
looking at the old icon still covered with the black cloth. His face got
serious. There was silence for a second. Jamsie remembers holding his
mother's hand in anguish as they both watched Ara.

Then Ara played the first bars of an old Armenian hymn to the
Virgin. He started to sway back and forth. Lydia and Jamsie both
moved quickly to help him, but they were too late. Trailing off in the
middle of his song, he doubled over, coughed violently, and fell
forward, clawing the air for support. His hand caught the black drape
over the icon, and it came away as he fell.

When they reached him, he was on his back, the black drape
clutched in one hand, the clarinet in the other. Above him, the icon
glimmered in the morning light with its old gold, blue, and brown
colors. For the first time in many years, Jamsie looked at the tranquil
eyes of the Virgin.

Then he looked at his father's face, and a weight was lifted off him.
In death the "look" had gone. Ara's features had returned to
something resembling what they had been ten years before. Jamsie
never forgot that change at his father's death. He still could not
understand the "look," but he was glad for Ara that it had gone. Ara
was buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood to sleep with the other 400,000
people already there.

The following week Lydia told her son he was on his own. Except
for two visits, Jamsie was not to be with her again until her death in
1959. As he walked up Broadway that day of parting with his mother,
all he heard were Lydia's words: "You're on your own now."

The old el had been torn down; and they were starting the 6th
Avenue subway. Jamsie stood for a long time watching the workmen.
A flood of resentment took hold of him. They were spending $65

270 THE CASES

million on that subway, he had read in the newspaper. But his own
father was dead, his mother was an aging prostitute, and he had been
helpless to change any of that. It all made no sense.

A curious new feeling was building up in him. Without moving,
without seeing anything different or hearing an ethereal voice, he felt
as if an alternative to his misery of loneliness was being offered him. It
was accompanied by fear. But he experienced also the same strange
sense of companionship as on the night he first knew his mother would
be a prostitute. He was alone, but he was not really alone. He felt the
loss of his father very deeply. He had deep misgivings for his mother's
well-being. Yet both of them slipped into the background of his mind.
In the forefront was this new, unsettling, but rather welcome feeling of
being wanted, of not being really alone.

In that moment, for the first time, he was certain that there was,
indeed, some presence, someone or something present to him, and that
to accept it meant renouncing any genuine love for his father and
mother as he had known them in childhood and early youth.

In 1940 Jamsie was promoted to guide at NBC. Then, on the
invitation of a very close friend of his father, he went to live and study
in Oklahoma City. The friend provided him with enough money to
follow courses in journalism and broadcasting; he did part-time work
to supplement his income.

The years in Oklahoma City were tranquil ones for Jamsie. There
was no recurrence of the "funny look." He rarely had a sense of the
strange presence, and he formed some solid friendships.

He moved back to New York in 1946, at the age of twenty-three,
and started to build a career in radio. Outside work, he lived a quiet
life. He spent most of his time either at home listening to records and
reading, or wandering the streets of midtown and lower Manhattan.

He always hoped he would find his mother. Nobody in her old
haunts seemed to know where she was or what had happened to her.
Eventually word reached him from an old family friend that she was
living in Flushing. He had one long visit with her there.

Lydia was much deteriorated. There was still a deep feeling
between them; but both felt and tacitly decided that, except for some
serious personal crisis, they should see each other rarely. Meeting was
too painful.

At the same time, Jamsie was also engaged in a search of a very
different kind. Once he set foot in New York again, he caught glimpses

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 271

of that ''look" — in the subway, from the middle of crowds, aloft among
the neon signs, in movie houses, and sometimes late at night, before he
went to bed and when he stood looking out the window at the lights of
Manhattan.

And he now felt something else that was new and, in its own way,
reassuring: a violent and unconquerable persuasion that he had always
known what "it" was, who "it" was. His old fright was transformed
into an insatiable urge to remember. If he could only remember what
"it" was.

Sometimes, in off-moments, he seemed to be on the verge of
realizing what or who "it" was, of recalling the place and the time
when he had been told about it. He could not shake the idea that he
had been told about it.

But his efforts always ended in frustration. Just as names and places
were about to rush into his mind and to his lips, something would
happen inside him, and he would lose his grip on them. His frustration
at this continual defeat began to produce a rage in him.

Jamsie had one last meeting with Lydia. She had moved from
Flushing to lower Broadway. During those few hours he spent with
her, all his rage and frustration was dissipated. Lydia, by now living on
church welfare, spoke to him slowly and quietly about his father and
about his own future. This was the last experience of human
tenderness Jamsie was to have for many years. Later he left word of his
whereabouts with the local precinct and the church authorities who
helped Lydia, promising to keep them posted of any change in his
address. He kept that promise.

It was during this period of Jamsie 's life that his colleagues at the
radio station began to notice that he talked to himself; even more
oddly, he occasionally flew into solitary rages. Of course, the moment
Jamsie realized other people were watching, he became a very amiable
and smiling man, to compensate for any unpleasant impression he
might have given. Yet, time and time again, he could be seen walking
alone on the streets or in the corridors of the radio station, or standing
in the washroom, his eyes wide and staring, his nostrils flaring, and his
lips drawn back over his teeth as if in some deep, internal,
all-absorbing effort.

After two years in New York, Jamsie was transferred to Cleveland.
Here he had his first paralyzing dose of what became commonplace in
his life a few years later.

One evening he was walking down Euclid Avenue on his way home.

272 THE CASES

All day his mind had been opening and closing on the endless puzzle:
when and where had he been told about "it," about that "look"? Since
his arrival in Cleveland, all appearances of the "look" had ceased. But
this only seemed to increase his curiosity and his need to know the
answer. Tonight, it seemed to him, he was very near to recalling
exactly.

As he walked on, memories and words began to gather up out of a
deep darkness of recollection and slowly to take shape. He was almost
craning forward as he peered within himself with profound intensity to
catch them. He began to feel excited, as he felt a growing realization
that this was the moment.

Suddenly, just as he was about to see those images and say those
words, the words and pictures — as he describes it — seemed to form
themselves into a long, quickly moving stream and "floated like
lightning" out of the top of his head and up into the sky. It had all
escaped him!

He jumped up and down on the pavement in frustration, looking up
at the night sky with tears in his eyes. Then, when he saw nothing up
there but clouds, he turned away and went dejectedly toward the
small restaurant where he normally took his supper.

At the door of the restaurant he stopped in astonishment. It was too
much! There, at the back of the dining room, among the crowded
tables and chatting people, he saw a face with that "look." He pushed
his way past waiters and packed tables. But when he reached the place
where the "face" had been, he found two staid people, an aging man
and woman, eating their dinner in stony silence. They looked at him
briefly and disinterestedly, then went on eating.

From that moment, Jamsie was convinced that somebody or
something was playing hide-and-seek with him. But he could not figure
out how it was all done or why. It became frequent in his daily life for
words and memories to behave like the floating lightning and to "dive"
out of his skull. Sometimes he saw them silhouetted against the sky
before they disappeared far, far up into the clouds; sometimes they
went so fast he could not catch sight of them at all.

In successive years and at various stations where he worked
(Detroit, 195 1; New Orleans, 1953; Kansas City, 1955; Los Angeles,
1956), the story was always the same. He tried once to explain it all to
a psychiatrist in Los Angeles, but he found the sessions with him
unproductive and infuriating.

He had one friendship with a woman in Kansas City that might have

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 273

become serious. But one evening, only a few weeks after they had
begun dating, Jamsie treated her to such an uncontrolled exhibition of
rage, frustration, and jealousy that she broke up with him then and
there.

Just about a year after his transfer to Los Angeles, he had his first
face-to-face meeting with the source of his trouble. He lived in
Alhambra at the time, and drove each day to the radio station.

One evening, as he drove home in the dusk, he again sensed that
curious presence for the fourth time in his life. The car radio was
playing a medley of songs. Suddenly, as "California, Here I Come!"
was being sung, the words seemed to plaster themselves all around the
sky in front of him. He had already had a lot of crazy things like this in
his life, and, while he could not ignore it, he could cope with it. As
"California, Here I Come!" continued to plaster itself around him,
Jamsie switched off the radio.

Then something caught his eye in the rearview mirror. It was a face.

As with so many of the strange things that kept happening to him,
Jamsie felt neither fright nor surprise. He seemed to himself to have
expected it, to have known it was there all along. The eyes of that face
were looking at him and he knew — without knowing how — that he
knew their owner.

There were no more words floating or plastered around him now.
Jamsie slowed down, waiting all the time in silence. But there was no
sound and no movement from the back seat.

He glanced again in the mirror: the large, bulbous eyes were still
looking at him. He could not believe they were really red. Must be the
reflection of the street lights, he thought. The face had a nose, ears,
mouth, cheeks, a funny chin much too narrow for the rest of the face, a
kind of high-domed forehead ending in a somewhat pointed head. The
skin was dark as if from long exposure to sunlight. He could not make
out if it was white or brown or black-skinned.

But something more than the vividness of that face puzzled
him — the absence of something. The face was certainly alive — the
eyes glinted with meaning, even laughingly. The head moved silently
now and then. But something was lacking, something he expected in a
face, but which this face did not show.

As he turned slowly into the driveway to his garage, he heard a
voice, chiding and familiar, in tones he would expect a eunuch to
have: "Oh! For Pete's sake, Jamsie! Stop acting the fool. We've been
together for years. Don't tell me you don't know me."

274 THE CASES

Jamsie realized that this too was somehow or other true: they had
been together for a long time. Everything, even this, had the same
curious familiarity about it.

As the car came to a standstill in the garage, he heard the voice
again: "Well, so long, Jamsie! See you tomorrow. Wait for your Uncle
Pontor

As Jamsie entered the house, he thought he smelled a strange odor.
At the time he connected it in no way with Uncle Ponto. It was a
momentary thing, and he forgot about it immediately.

This happened on a Monday evening. He could not sleep that night.
And, although he did not know it then, Ponto 's visits would multiply
quickly until, for six years, he would be dealing with Uncle Ponto
almost on a daily basis.

The following Sunday Jamsie was driving the short distance to
Pasadena when out the window to his right he saw Ponto craning his
head down from the roof of the car looking in at him upside down
through the window. Ponto was moving his left hand as though
pitching a ball, and with each gesture he seemed to throw a word, a
phrase, or a whole sentence into the sky where it remained for a while
and then danced away over the horizon.

"WELCOME TO JAMSIE MY FRIEND!" ran one message.
"GREATEST BLOW-OUT FOR THE MIND!" was another.
"PONTO! JAMSIE! PALS! REJOICE! PASADENA HERE WE
COME!"

And so it went. Accordingly as Ponto threw each message into the
sky, he turned back and grinned at Jamsie. When Jamsie swerved
dangerously because of the distraction, Ponto shook his finger in mock
reproof and flung a "LET ME DRIVE YOU!" sign across the sky.
Then he disappeared.

This was the flamboyant beginning of Uncle Ponto's attendance on
Jamsie: Uncle Ponto, the spirit that was to harass him for years, finally
press his claims to be Jamsie's "familiar," and twice drive him to the
edge of suicide.

Gradually Jamsie got to know Ponto's general appearance. But he
never saw him whole from head to foot at any one time. Ponto's face,
the back of his head, his hands, his feet, his eyes, all were parts of
Ponto he saw from time to time. To Jamsie's eye, somehow accus-
tomed before the fact to all these bizarre happenings, Ponto was not
misshapen, yet Jamsie knew that Ponto was hardly shaped like a

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 275

normal human being. And then there was that funny lack in Ponto's
face. Something was lacking.

His head was too large and too pointed, the eyelids, too heavy, the
nose and mouth always contorted by an expression Jamsie could not
identify with any emotion or attitude known to him. The skin was too
light to be black, too dark to be white, too reddish to be sallow, too
yellow to be sunburned. His hands were more like mechanical claws.
His body — seen in parts — seemed to have the flexibility of a cat and to
be thinner than his enormous, pointed head. His legs were bandy and
disproportionate — one knee seemed higher than the other. Ponto's feet
were splayed, like a duck's, and all the toes were of even length and
the same size.

Jamsie was sure Ponto was not human. Beyond that, he was sure of
nothing except that Ponto was real — as real as any object or person
around him. What Ponto did was real and concrete. So, for Jamsie, he
had to be real. At the same time, Jamsie again and again found himself
wondering why he was not frightened by Ponto. And occasionally he
did ask himself if Ponto was a spirit or a being from another planet.
But in the beginning each appearance of Ponto merely fired his
curiosity.

After a while Jamsie realized that he could anticipate an appearance
of Ponto by the queer smell he had noticed the first night; and, when
Ponto disappeared, the smell lingered on afterward for about an hour.
It was not a bad smell, as of sewage or rotting food. It was just a very
strong smell; it had a trace of musk in it, but laced with a certain
pungency. Jamsie could only describe it as the way "red would smell,
if you could smell red."

The smell always gave Jamsie a feeling of being alone with
something overwhelming. In other words, the effect of the smell was
not primarily in his nose but in Jamsie's mind. It did not repel, did not
attract, did not disgust, did not fascinate. It made him feel very small
and insignificant. And this bothered Jamsie more than all the other odd
things.

As far as he could calculate, Ponto's overall height was about 4%
feet. Yet whenever Ponto appeared to him, he seemed to be the mirror
image of something gargantuan hovering nearby, and in some
confusing way the smell was tied closely to that sense of nearness of
overwhelming size. If Jamsie felt any personal threat at that stage, it
had to do with the effects of that smell.

276 THE CASES

At the end of his "visits," and just before he disappeared, Ponto took
to giving Jamsie a questioning look out of the corner of his eye, as if to
say: Aren't you going to ask me about myself? Jamsie, naturally
stubborn, resolved not to ask, not even to notice this gesture of
Ponto — if he could bring that off.

Ponto kept on appearing at the oddest places. Since his first, chiding
words to Jamsie, and except for the words he flung, floated, and
plastered all over Jamsie's horizon, Ponto never said anything in these
early visits. He appeared in the back of the car, sitting on the radiator
in the living room, inside the elevator in the upper corner, swinging
from one of the overpasses as Jamsie traveled on the freeway, in
restaurants, on top of the cash registers, at Jamsie's desk in the studio,
on top of the engineer's table in full view of Jamsie as he sat in the
sound-room broadcasting.

Ponto pushed swinging doors in the opposite direction to Jamsie. He
placed money on the counter of the delicatessen to pay for Jamsie's
groceries, ripped the dry cleaner's plastic bags, turned on faucets,
turned off the ignition of his car, switched on the headlights, and in a
thousand ways kept a regular — though, for the first few months of
1958, not a frequent — reminder of his presence in front of Jamsie.

During the early months of 1958 Ponto never interfered with
Jamsie's work, he rarely appeared in his apartment, and he never
bothered him at night. In fact, Jamsie found he could sleep all night
undisturbed. He had a feeling Ponto was somewhere near watching
him — or perhaps watching over him; he did not know which. After a
while, the bizarre antics began wearing on Jamsie and whittling his
patience and control very thin. Jamsie became convinced that he had
seen Ponto somewhere else or had known somebody very like Ponto in
previous years, though surely he would not have forgotten so odd a
figure as that little fellow!

Finally Jamsie's patience wore out, and his curiosity — certainly
understandable in the fantastic circumstances — led him to his greatest
mistake with Ponto. He yielded to an impulse one day and asked Ponto
what he wanted. Ponto at that precise moment was swinging from the
lamp in Jamsie's office.

"Oh, just to be with you, Jamsie! I thought you'd never ask! Actually
I want to be your friend. Did you ever know anyone as faithful and as
attendant on you as I am?"

Then he swung away into nothingness.

Jamsie's innocent question opened floodgates. He now became the

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 277

object of a continual barrage from Ponto that went on week after
week. There would be no letup for years.

Ponto would start talking the moment Jamsie left his apartment to
drive to work. Most of his conversation was harmless and inane,
sometimes unintentionally funny, more often ludicrous, and quite
often with a twist to his remarks that caused Jamsie some inner
disgust.

For a long time Jamsie kept himself under control; but he lost his
temper with Ponto for the first time when he sprinkled one of his
conversations with jibes about Lydia and crude remarks about the
female hyena! Jamsie fell into a frothing rage with Ponto, telling him in
a series of profanities to leave his mother out of the conversation and
to get out of his sight and hearing.

"Okay, Jamsie. Okay!" Ponto said resignedly. "Okay. Have it your
way. But we belong to each other." He disappeared.

The experience left Jamsie shaking with rage. But, after a couple of
hours, restored to the normal world of his work, and being reasonable,
he began to ask himself seriously if he were not imagining it all. He
was sitting at his microphone waiting for a commercial to end and the
signal from his engineer to take up his broadcast.

As if to answer his inner thoughts, Ponto appeared and began
plastering short words on the notice board the engineer used to pass
silent messages to Jamsie when he was on the air. "FORGIVEN!" it
read. "BACK SOON! CARRY ON, PAL!" In spite of himself, Jamsie
saw the twisted humor of it all, although he doubted that Ponto was
bright enough to be funny. Ponto was doing what came natural to him.
Jamsie found himself grinning at the engineer, who, taken by surprise
by this show of geniality on Jamsie's part, grinned back at him
sheepishly.

Ponto's conversations, except for some of the bits and scraps
reported here and dictated to me by Jamsie, escape Jamsie's memory
now. They were nearly always inconsequential and only sometimes
annoying to the point of making Jamsie fall into a fit of anger. But,
because he answered Ponto sometimes or made comments on Ponto's
behavior — all this under his breath — the people at the station
accepted the fact that Jamsie Z. "talks to himself a lot" and, as one put
it, "is a little looney on certain points — but aren't we all?"

In spite of everything, things went well for Jamsie's career. In fact,
Jamsie's reporting was good and his ratings were high.

In August 1959, news arrived that Lydia had died in her sleep.

278 THE CASES

Jamsie returned to New York for a couple of days to wind up her
affairs. Lydia had made a will by which Jamsie, the sole heir, received
two possessions: the old icon and Lydia's handwritten memento of
George Whitney's bid of 204 for U. S. Steel. Jamsie brought them both
back to Los Angeles and placed them in a closet where Ponto had the
habit of making himself comfortable. Ponto objected to the icon very
strongly, but Jamsie was adamant.

"Okay, pal. Okay. Okay," Ponto said. "But some day we'll get rid of
that useless garbage. Won't we, pal?"

In the fall of i960, Jamsie was offered and accepted a very good
radio spot in San Francisco. He moved up from Los Angeles, and after
he had settled into his new apartment, Jamsie arranged to drive over
and meet his new station manager.

"Jamsie, the hour of decision is approaching." Ponto, of course, had
come to San Francisco. He was balancing at the moment on the fire
escape outside the apartment house and talking through the window.
Jamsie said nothing.

"Jamsie! Promise me! No sex and no booze! You hear? Jamsie!
Promise your old Uncle Ponto. Come on, pal, promise!"

Curiously Jamsie had never touched a woman since his days in
Cleveland. Somehow, all desire had left him after that first experience
of words escaping like lightning from his skull.

"Actually," Ponto tittered ridiculously, "I don't expect much
trouble from you along that line. Hee! Hee!"

Jamsie glared at him for a second, then continued with his
preparations to go out.

It was in what Ponto said next that Jamsie heard the strange note of
urgency that sometimes overloaded Ponto's eunuch's voice.

"Now we all have our place, you hear? And I can't appear as often
as I like, and as often as I have in the past. I have my betters, too,
y'know. You won't believe it, but I have."

On the way to the radio station, Ponto, riding in the back seat,
seemed to be seized with a sort of hysteria. His speech started to come
faster and faster and to be deteriorating. Finally he no longer made
any sense at all. He prattled on about lasers and roast chicken and
whisky and the moon. Jamsie only recollects phrases such as "Jupiter
rotates every 9 hours and 55 minutes." "Car necking, masturbation,
and good grades." "Hurrah for the Golden Gate but don't go near the
water!" "Its cheer creak."

Jamsie drew up at the station, left his car, and started to make his

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 279

way in. Ponto went along, prattling incoherently all the while. Jamsie
rang the bell at the front gate, but no one answered. He wandered to
the back. Still Ponto kept talking, his words utterly meaningless.
Jamsie tried the back door. It was locked. He was about to return to
the front when, without warning, there was silence. Ponto had
disappeared. In retrospect, Jamsie is certain that any sudden disap-
pearance of Ponto meant the approach of someone Ponto feared.

"Are you looking for someone?" A balding man in his mid-fifties,
tallish, thin, wearing rimless spectacles, had come out from a side door
Jamsie had not noticed, and stood looking at him with his head cocked
to one side.

"I'm coming to work here," Jamsie answered easily. 'Tm looking for
the station manager."

"You must be Jamsie Z.," said the man. "I'm the station manager.
Beedem's the name. Jay Beedem."

Jamsie shook hands and took in Beedem's features. He thought for a
second he might have met Beedem before. He could not quite tie it
down.

"Come in and let's get acquainted."

As they sat across from one another in Beedem's office, Jamsie
scrutinized his new boss, trying to place him. Beedem meanwhile put
Jamsie a few questions and then proceeded to fill him in on his future
work at the station. He was a precise man, obviously, and neat almost
to a fault — shining bald head, carefully groomed side hair, immacu-
lately clean and tasteful clothes, slightly foppish, good teeth, masculine
hands with well-manicured nails. His face was roughly an oval shape
not very lined for his age. But his eyes and mouth attracted Jamsie's
particular attention.

After about a quarter of an hour of conversation, Jamsie concluded
that his boss's eyes were completely closed to him. Jay Beedem
laughed, glanced, conveyed meanings, and questioned him with his
eyes, but all this seemed to be as revealing as images skipping across a
film screen. There is no feeling there, thought Jamsie to himself. No
real feeling. At least, I can't see any. Each smile and laugh was only on
Beedem's mouth. He did not seem really smiling or laughing.

Jamsie really does not have any fully satisfying answers about Jay
Beedem, even today. In retrospect, he will still say that the vague
impression he had of having seen Beedem's face before he met him in
the flesh came from the traits of that "funny-lookin' face" reflected in
Beedem's face. In fact, one important element of the exorcism,

280 THE CASES

recorded on the tape, has to do with the strange face of Beedem and
the "look."

Ponto always kept in the background when Beedem was with
Jarnsie. And whenever Jamsie approached Beedem for a discussion or
for help or encouragement, he left Beedem in the same sort of inner
torment and turmoil that gripped him during his worst moments with
Ponto. The keynote of that turmoil was panic, the panic of someone
finding himself trapped or ambushed or betrayed.

While it remains speculation, a very good case can be made for Jay
Beedem being one of the perfectly possessed, a person who at some
time in his career made one clear, definitive decision to accept
possession, who never went back on that decision in any way, and who
came under the total control of an evil spirit. It was on this very
suspicion that, in the exorcism, Father Mark felt he must try to see if
there was some link between Beedem and Ponto that was harmful to
Jamsie.

But when Jamsie left Beedem that first day, all the problems he still
speculates about today were then in the future. Over the next days
and weeks he settled easily into a daily routine. He loved San
Francisco. He liked his new post. He got on well with his fellow
workers; they respected his abilities and he never let them down
professionally. He had pleasant relations with Cloyd, his producer, and
with Lila Wood, the chief researcher on Cloyd's staff. With Jay
Beedem his relations were correct and formal. But as time went on
Beedem made no secret of his growing dislike and contempt for
Jamsie's peculiarities.

Their colleagues, who noticed the ill-feeling between the two men,
put the whole thing down to a difference in temperament between
them: they just did not get on well together. Everyone else easily
forgave Jamsie's idiosyncrasies, for he had developed a broadcasting
style all his own, "and it was good for business." Jamsie was not slow
to recognize that he had Ponto to thank for much of that.

Uncle Ponto would gyrate around him in the studio saying irrelevant
things only Jamsie could hear. He would produce statistics, figures,
facts, and data which Jamsie would automatically incorporate into his
patter of broadcasting, keeping up an incredible stream of banter. It
was bright and amusing, a cheery-beery-bee kind of prattle full of
various irrelevancies about this, that, and the other, all strung together
with "but" and "whereas" and "lest I forget it" and "as the actress

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 28 1

said to the bishop" and "let me tell you before you forget you ever
heard me talk," until after about three minutes he would throw in a
punch line about a product he was advertising or a ball game he was
reporting or some bit of national news the station wanted to highlight.
This style became his signature, well known and valued, on the air.
For the first few months in San Francisco, therefore, Jamsie secretly
valued Ponto's presence.

It was only after a protracted period that he saw the first sign of real
trouble. On his way home one evening Ponto, on the back seat of the
car, said: "Jamsie, let's get married."

Taking this as just a part of Ponto's usual nonsensical prattle — of
which there was always quite a lot in those days — Jamsie thought
Ponto would prattle on to something else if he kept quiet. But Ponto
was serious, and he said so.

"Jamsie! I'm serious. Let's get married."

Goose pimples started on Jamsie's arms and legs. For the first time,
Jamsie began to be seriously afraid of Ponto. He drove on in silence,
but his mind was full of a new apprehension.

The next day in the station cafeteria Jamsie was joined at the table
by Lila Wood, Cloyd's researcher. Ponto was somewhere among the
coffee urns, gazing quietly at Jamsie. Lila, like others, had noticed
Jamsie's deep depression that day. But, as she says, she also sensed the
grain of fear running through him.

Knowing better than to tackle Jamsie head-on, she said lightly as she
rose after lunch: "Wanta share a steak tonight with a friend and me?"

It was the first time in a long while that anyone had approached
Jamsie so nonchalantly. He had become accustomed to people
avoiding him socially. He looked at Lila in disbelief. But Lila knew
how to deal with the situation. "Okay," she said as she turned away
smiling. "See you at 5:30."

Jamsie stared after her. Her voice, or something in her voice,
affected him. As he said afterward, "It was like a short chord of
beautiful harmony struck in between the squalling of 200 squabbling
cats and ten jackhammers all going at the same time."

But his reverie lasted a short time. Ponto's voice broke in with a new
sharpness. "I heard all that. Heard all of it. That smelly young bitch.
Do you know her friend? You will. I do! A balding pig. That's him.
Isn't man enough to get between her legs even."

For just a few moments Jamsie felt impervious to Ponto's corroding

282 THE CASES

accents, and it was a very great relief. He just smiled at Ponto. Ponto's
face twisted in anger; and, with a sort of a leap backward and upward,
he disappeared.

Immediately Jamsie felt a solid lump of agony within him. This was
something new. It started somewhere around his middle. Then it
moved to his spine. One spike of pain hit his coccyx, another pierced
his testicles, a third prodded up through his spinal column; and from
the nape of his neck it seemed to branch outward in two directions.
One stream invaded his lungs. He grew short of breath and felt dizzy.
Another stream reached upward into his skull and gripped his brain, as
though contracting it. He remained sitting for a few minutes, his chin
in his hand, waiting. It passed.

As he stood up, he heard Ponto's voice. "You see, pal! You see! You
already belong to me in great part. Watch it tonight!" Ponto was not
visible, but the smell was there.

That evening Jamsie went home with Lila. She had just prepared
three steaks when her friend rang at the front door. Jamsie opened the
door to a stoutish man, completely bald, whose blue eyes looked at
him with an expression of good humor.

"I'm Father Mark, Lila's friend. You must be Jamsie. She told me
about you. Glad to see you."

As Jamsie found out, Lila had an ulterior motive for the invitation.
Before the evening was out, Jamsie was talking freely to Mark. Mark
seemed to know all about Ponto's behavior. The only thing he did not
know was Ponto's name; and when Jamsie told him, he gave a short
little laugh and said: "Good God! I thought I'd heard them all.
But— Ponto! God!"

The two men made an appointment to meet the following evening.
Mark even promised he would make some of his own special
mushroom soup for which he was so well known among his friends.

After that mushroom soup dinner at Mark's rectory, Jamsie told
Mark his life story, omitting nothing. Mark listened in silence, puffing a
long church warden's pipe that reeked of tar, and interrupting now
and again with a question.

It was past midnight when Jamsie finished. Mark put down his pipe,
reflected a little while in silence, and looked at Jamsie speculatively.
The silence was not uncomfortable for Jamsie. Then Mark spent the
next hour telling Jamsie what he thought of the whole matter.

Jamsie, according to Mark, was the object of an evil spirit's
attentions. There were hundreds — and, for all Mark knew, perhaps

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 283

millions and trillions — of different spirits. "You don't number spirits as
you number human beings," Mark told him. He explained that in his
experience, which was considerable, it appeared that each kind of
spirit had its own characteristics and techniques of approaching
humans. However, a certain kind of spirit — not a very important
one — always sought to become a "familiar" of some human being,
man, woman, or child. Rarely — but it did happen — did a "familiar"
spirit possess an animal.

What was a "familiar"? Jamsie wanted to know. Mark explained
that the key to the "familiarity" which such a spirit sought to obtain
lay in this: the person in question consented to a total sharing of his or
her consciousness and personal life with the spirit.

Mark gave an example. Normally, when you are walking around,
eating, working, washing yourself, talking, you are conscious of
yourself as distinct from others. Now supposing you were conscious of
yourself and of another self all the time, like Siamese twins but inside
your own head and in your consciousness. And supposing that the two,
so to speak, shared your consciousness. It's your self-consciousness,
your awareness of yourself, and at the same time, it's the conscious-
ness, the awareness of that other self. Both at the same time. No
getting away from one another. "Its" thoughts use your mind, but they
are not your thoughts, and you know that. "Its" imagination likewise.
And "its" will also. And you are aware of all this constantly, for as long
as you are conscious of yourself. That was the familiarity Mark was
talking about.

Jamsie was aghast. "My God," he says now, "I had already gone
down that road, at least part of the way. I didn't know what to do. I
was lost!"

Mark answered Jamsie's panic. He was not lost. He had never
consented to full possession by the "familiar." He had just been
invaded. But he was going to be more and more pressured to accept
full "familiarity."

What could happen? Jamsie wanted to know.

"You can be worn down," Mark said quietly. "You can be taken.
Like any of us. You're up against a force more powerful than you can
ever hope to be yourself."

Then Mark looked Jamsie straight in the eye and asked him directly
if he wanted to undergo Exorcism.

Strangely, Jamsie was speechless. Then slowly he asked in great
concern: "Would that mean Ponto would never return?"

284 THE CASES

Mark told Jamsie that, if the exorcism were successful, Ponto would
be gone forever. He concentrated his attention on Jamsie's every move
and reaction. He was only now beginning to be able to measure how
far Ponto had extended his hold on Jamsie.

"Well," he said finally, with a great effort to appear relaxed, "what
is it going to be? Do you think we should go as far as that?" He did not
want to send Jamsie off half-crazed with fear.

Jamsie was confused. Memories of his loneliness and his having been
deserted by his parents crowded his mind. Was this Ponto affair as bad
as Mark made it out to be? Couldn't he keep Ponto at a distance
anyway, and still enjoy the exotic character of the whole affair?
Besides, wouldn't he lose some of that verve as a broadcaster that was
now his great asset?

Mark chatted with Jamsie for a while about all this. He poured them
both another drink. Jamsie was not ready to accept Exorcism. Mark
had to wait for Jamsie.

Very earnestly Mark gave Jamsie some practical advice. The whole
point, he said, was to resist invasion. Enjoy — if that was the word,
Mark said wryly — Ponto's antics and his stimulation, but resist
invasion, Mark insisted. For instance, if Jamsie were to feel a strange
grip on his mind, memory, and imagination, and he was not able to
resist it, he should adopt a simple trick in order to offset such a "grip":
spell the name of Jesus out letter by letter, over and over. It was this
stratagem that was to save Jamsie from suicide at the reservoir later
on.

When Jamsie asked if he could use any other name, Mark said with
a laugh that he could, but that he would find only that name effective.
Mark explained the essence of Exorcism — what it meant, and its
effects in the possessed. Finally Mark told Jamsie to call him: "Night
or day. Wherever I am, wherever you are, whenever it happens to be,
I'll come immediately to you. But don't delay, if once you decide I can
help with Exorcism."

When Jamsie got home that night, he could not sleep. But Ponto did
not appear.

About a month later, when Jamsie went for his yearly medical
checkup, the doctor told him that all was well except for his heart. He
should be careful of too much excitement. The doctor prescribed some
tablets and regulated Jamsie's diet. The doctor asked him if he was
worried about anything. Was there anything preying on his mind?

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 285

Jamsie was surprised at the sharpness of the doctor. Yes, he admitted,
he was very preoccupied with personal matters. The doctor recom-
mended that Jamsie think about consulting a psychologist — just to
chat over things, relieve the strain a little. He gave Jamsie the name of
a man whom he could personally recommend.

Jamsie thought over the matter for about a week. He could not
accept Mark's conclusion that Ponto should be exorcised — not because
he did not believe that Ponto was a disembodied spirit, or "anyway
partially disembodied," he thought wryly, but because he could not
face up to daily life without Ponto's disturbances.

But then he began to wonder why he liked such disturbances.
Because Ponto's possession of him had already gone a certain distance?
That was what Mark thought. Or because, as he preferred to think,
Ponto was the one relief in an otherwise bleak landscape — and, into
the bargain, a marvelous stimulus for his work? Or was this precisely
the trap Ponto had laid for him? All the lines crisscrossed in confusion.
And the confusion only got worse when he began to have all sorts of
doubts about Mark's judgment and intentions. These priests were
always looking for converts anyway, he thought. Yet Mark sounded so
sincere. Perhaps, after all, a talk with a good psychologist would be
helpful.

All that week, Ponto did not appear.

It was when he was driving to his first appointment with the
psychologist that Jamsie heard Ponto for the first time in eight or nine
days.

"The shrink's all right, Jamsie. He's a good man; and you go and do
what he says. But if you would only listen to me and do what I want,
you would need no shrink." Jamsie went anyway.

The psychologist recommended by his doctor passed Jamsie on to a
psychiatrist colleague. Jamsie spent over 18 months in therapy, but the
results were terribly disappointing.

The therapist started off by warning Jamsie that his psychological
condition was precarious indeed. He needed extended treatment. But
after about six months, the therapist reversed his judgment. He said he
could not find any genuine psychological imbalance or abnormalcy in
Jamsie. All of Jamsie's accounts of Ponto, the therapist said, were
concocted holus-bolus by Jamsie, were deliberate inventions. The
damned thing was a hoax, and he for one didn't think it was funny.
Jamsie finally persuaded the man that this was no hoax, and went on

286 THE CASES

earnestly with therapy for another year. But finally, when it was clear
that there was no appreciable change for the better, Jamsie gave up on
psychiatry.

During this period of therapy Ponto appeared regularly and with his
usual behaviorisms, but he never really distressed Jamsie. In fact,
Jamsie was glad to see Ponto. He seemed more real than the therapist
and all his analyses. And, as Ponto remarked to jamsie one day, "You
and I, Jamsie, are one, real flesh and blood; but that shrink lives in his
head. Now I ask you: Which is the better off?"

Toward the end of Jamsie's treatment with the therapist, Ponto
seemed to grow impatient, as if he had a deadline to meet in Jamsie's
case. More and more, Jamsie found that Ponto's thoughts, reactions,
feelings, memories, intentions were present to his consciousness, even
when Ponto was not visible. He began to experience two sets of
thoughts and feelings — his own and Ponto's. He always knew which
were which, but he literally had no privacy of mind.

Amazingly enough, except for an occasional clash with Jay Beedem,
who always treated Jamsie with marked coldness, Jamsie's work
continued to be excellent. But by November 1963, internally, inside
Jamsie, life was becoming unbearable.

Jamsie remembers clearly that it was from December 1963 that a
new desperation began to take hold of him. Ponto did not let up. He
kept devising new antics and developed the habit of appearing in
Jamsie's apartment at the end of the day and not disappearing till
Jamsie went to bed. He chattered on and on, usually urging Jamsie to
do something — quit his job, take a trip, hate this person or that — but
most often to "let Ponto in."

Jamsie remembers one incident clearly. He had returned home one
evening very late. Ponto appeared on his living-room table and spent
about an hour juggling words and phrases and colored lumps of
sound — or so it seemed to Jamsie — in the air. Then, as Ponto grew
more intense, he developed a chant that grated terribly on Jamsie, a
sort of "rhythm and grunt." He repeated a word over and over with a
little rhythmic grunt after it each time. "Let me in," he would begin.
Then over and over and over: "Let-uh! Let-uh! Let-uh! Me-uh!
Me-uh! Me-uh! In-uh! In-uh! In-uh!"

The staccato beat was torture to Jamsie. He finally screamed at
Ponto to stop.

In the months following, Jamsie was treated to repeat performances
along this line, sometimes once a week. Each time, Jamsie would be

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 287

reduced to shouting and screaming in order to silence Ponto.
Neighbors complained regularly about the noise.

Very late one particular evening in December of 1963, after having
had his nerves jangled in this way by Ponto for too long, Jamsie could
hardly believe it when Ponto was finally quiet for a while. Jamsie
soaked up the badly needed tranquillity.

But rather soon he began to hear a new sound. He listened intently.
He could hear Ponto's voice clearly, but it seemed to be caught up in a
babel of other voices similar to Ponto's.

He could not tell what was being said. There was a lot of laughter
and many exclamations. But the whole thing reminded him of how
sometimes he used to listen to the radio in his home of the 1930s and
get nothing but a rising and falling stream of static together with
indistinct and far-off voices.

As Jamsie strained to hear, there was a pause and silence. Then
Ponto's mincing voice from the kitchen: "Jamsie, would you mind if
some of my associates and family joined us? After all, we are going to
get married, aren't we? And soon, eh?"

The babel of voices started again and seemed to be approaching the
door of his living room.

Jamsie froze for a second; then, seized by a blind, rushing panic, he
stood up and dashed out the door, got into his car, and sped as fast as
he could to the Golden Gate Bridge. His mind was numb, but his
emotions were in turmoil. He felt cold, unwanted, persecuted,
desperate. He could not take any more of it. He wanted out. He
stopped in the middle of the bridge.

"It's no use, Jamsie."

Jamsie knew the voice. God! He could have cried. There he was,
balanced on the damned guardrail.

"It's no use, my friend. You and I have much to do before your life
ends. Why do you think I am to be your familiar? So that you die
young? Don't be a fool!"

Jamsie turned away. For the first time he had the feeling of being
beaten by Ponto. He made his way slowly back home. There was no
hurry. He did not know what to do anyway. He thought aimlessly of
Mark. But what the hell, the shrink hadn't helped. What could Mark
do for him?

Ponto did not appear again that night, but it was a very brief rest for
Jamsie. The nighttime had always been a great source of strength and
recuperation for Jamsie; and even though Ponto had been encroaching

288 THE CASES

a little more all the time, there had always remained some hours at
night when Jamsie was alone, relatively at peace, and could rest. Ponto
had never stayed the entire night without asking Jamsie's consent.

But now Ponto insisted: they had to be intimate. What he meant by
that Jamsie was never sure. But it did mean he would spend nights in
Jamsie's apartment. And with a significance that escaped Jamsie,
Ponto wanted him to consent. They were going to be married, weren't
they? They were going to make the whole thing legal, weren't they?
Ponto said, grinning in his crooked fashion.

After weeks of badgering, Jamsie was ripe to make a drastic
decision. Anything would be better than this torture. Should he finish
it all by suicide? Or would it be better to telephone Father Mark? Or
should he just give in to Ponto and see how things worked out?

The worst of the badgering sessions with Ponto occurred on
February 1. Ponto installed himself in Jamsie's bedroom. Jamsie spent
the night stalking up and down his living-room floor, making coffee to
stay awake, arguing in a loud voice with Ponto, weeping continuously,
smoking and drinking intermittently. He could not get rid of Ponto.
And he could not make up his mind. He needed time. It was the
pressure on him by Ponto to make a decision that was crushing his
spirit.

Finally he decided to make time for thinking and analyzing it all. He
would ask for a leave of absence from the station. During the leave he
could go over all the events of the last few years, consult with the
psychiatrist again, see Father Mark, and get sufficient control of
himself to form some decision about a wise course of action.

When he arrived at the station early the following morning and
went to see Jay Beedem to request a few days' leave, his difficulties
took a new form.

Beedem spoke without lifting his face from the notes he was
reading. Beedem had noticed the increasingly peculiar behavior of
Jamsie over the last few weeks, he said. Beedem did not think a leave
of absence was the solution. Of course, Jamsie had some overdue
vacation days coming to him. But Beedem felt that, if Jamsie
continued creating a tension among the other station employees, there
could be no other alternative but to fire him.

The tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Neutral. Very cold.
Impersonal.

Jamsie still thought he could get through to Beedem if he could just

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 289

give him some idea of the dimension of the personal problem that was
torturing him. But when he tried, Beedem broke in slowly and
emphatically: "If you cannot make right decisions in personal affairs,
you cannot be trusted with matters that involve our clients and our
listeners."

Then Beedem lifted his head for the first time since Jamsie had
entered his office. Jamsie looked for some spark, any inkling of hope
for himself. Beedem's eyes were blank. Really blank. No metaphor.
They could have been made of colored glass, except that, unlike glass,
they did not reflect the office or the objects around them or the light
from the windows.

Jamsie knew then that there was no use trying to get through to
Beedem. He said something about catching up on the vacation days he
had missed. Beedem bent once again over his notes.

As Jamsie closed the door on his way out, he threw a quick look
back: Beedem was sitting bolt upright in his chair, eyes fixed on
Jamsie, glaring steadily. Beedem was looking through him, Jamsie
thought. Was that a look of hate and sneering contempt in Beedem's
eyes? Or was it simply the natural reaction of a harried station
manager to yet another personal problem of an employee?

Going down the corridor to his office, Jamsie tried to remember
some of Mark's after-dinner conversation with him. He seemed to be
the only one Jamsie had met who was sure he had a bead on Jamsie's
problem and what to do about it. But nothing was clear to Jamsie now.
He sat down at his desk. He tried to clear his mind. He wanted to go
over everything that had happened to him since he had taken up work
at the station. His thoughts were in a maelstrom. He could not think
logically. Words such as "good," "evil," "Satan," "Jesus," "Ponto,"
"marriage," "possession," "free will" twirled and tumbled around
inside his head. He could not straighten them out. Then "Beedem"
began bobbing up in front of his mind. Beedem? Just like that, with a
large question mark. "Jay Beedem? Jay Beedem? Jay Beedem?"

"Jamsie, I've got the schedule for next month worked out." It was
his producer, Cloyd.

Jamsie looked up stupidly and muttered: "Jay Beedem?"

"Oh, he's seen it. It's okay. We're all set. Wanna see it?"

Jamsie took the schedule. But he could not concentrate on it now.
"I'll call you, Cloyd," was all he could manage.

When he was alone, he tried again. It was no use. He could see

290 THE CASES

Mark's face, Jay Beedem's face, Ponto's face, his own face, Ara's face,
Lydia's face, Cloyd's face. And Jay Beedem's again, with that look of
contempt and hate. But they were all question marks now.

Slowly Jamsie began to calm down; and he tried to get some
questions in order, at least. Was Mark right, and was he being invited
to be possessed? Was he possessed already? Was Mark just another
priest trying to make a convert out of him? Or maybe somewhere
along the line the shrink had been right? Was he paranoid or
schizophrenic? Making it all up?

Still restless, his thoughts switched back to Beedem. What was he
anyway? Just another stupid, heartless jerk? No, this guy had
something else. And he had it in spades. Until today, when Jamsie had
happened to glance back, he had never seen Jay Beedem display an
emotion. Nothing from inside. He had never even seen him really
laugh.

He started to think more about Beedem as a person. What did he
know of him? Beedem was a natural salesman. He could speak in
10,000 different tongues and tones, so to say, when he wanted to sell
something. He had a vicious wit and could turn without warning on
anyone and cut them down mercilessly in public. He often used
four-letter words as if they were gilt-edged securities to guarantee the
authority and accuracy of what he said. The women at the office
shunned him. Some had slept with him once — but no one ever
repeated the performance. He was either feared or despised, even
when he made people laugh.

Uncle Ponto still never appeared when Beedem was around. Ponto
appeared everywhere else, goddammit, Jamsie thought bitterly. Why
not whenever he was with Jay Beedem? Why not today, when he
could have used a little of that glib coaching?

Some strange edge to Beedem worried Jamsie. He was angry, sure.
But that wasn't it. He just couldn't get it together in his head.

Then all of a sudden Jamsie was distracted from his thoughts about
Beedem. It had been a long time since he'd worried about it, but now
he felt he had to solve the old puzzle of the "look," the "funny-lookin'
face." Great! As on that crazy night in Cleveland, he was sure now he
was on the verge of discovering what he had "been told about it." For
the first time in years he tried desperately to get all his memories
together, in order to piece the fragments into a composite robot
sketch.

Time and time again, as he sat at his desk, he thought he had it. His

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 2Q1

knuckles were white as he gripped the arms of his chair in the effort.
But each time, the bits fell away from his bidding. He sat hunched up
in his chair, laboring at this mental sketch; and slowly, bit by bit, the
fragments started finally to fall into place and stay put.

After some time, Cloyd stopped by Jamsie's office again. He found
Jamsie in extraordinary efforts of concentration, groaning and mutter-
ing to himself. When he could not get Jamsie's attention, he became
frightened and ran for help. He found two station engineers, and
together all three of them watched Jamsie, wondering what they
should do.

Jamsie, meanwhile, was totally absorbed in his effort. He was on the
very verge, he felt. But, at once, all the fragments fell apart into a long,
jagged line at the end of which were Jav BeedenVs unsmiling eyes.
Then, again in a lightning flash, the line of fragments seemed to pour
out his right ear, make for the window, and disappear up into the blue
midday sky. The last trace he saw of it was Jav BeedenVs face, for once
broken by an ear-to-ear grin, trailing off at the tail end of the
retreating line.

Jamsie clapped his hands to his ears. He was shouting, a tangled,
throaty gust of protest and rage.

Finally he heard Cloyd's voice coming from a great distance:
"Jamsie! Jamsie! Are you okay? Jamsie! Wake up!" He felt three pairs
of hands on him, and he looked into the frightened faces of Cloyd and
the two engineers.

"What's going on here?" It was Jay Beedem, calm, dispassionate,
annoyed, and bored all at once. He stood in the door and motioned
with his hand to the others to leave. He told Jamsie almost paternally
that he should take the rest of the day off.

Jamsie felt completely beaten. He had not solved anything. He had
not understood anything. It was idiotic for things to start flving out of
his head again. He had not even gotten a leave of absence. The rest of
the day off! Thanks a lot, he thought.

He stood up drooping and bowed, almost in tears. Jay Beedem stood
aside. Jamsie stumbled out of the office, down the corridor, and out it
into the parking lot to his car. It was Jamsie's last day at the station.
He would not see Jay Beedem again. But at that moment Jamsie could
not think ahead for five minutes.

The moment he entered his apartment, he knew Ponto was there
somewhere. There was that smell . . .

"Now, don't be angry, Jamsie," the voice came from the hall closet.

2Q2 THE CASES

"I'm going to remain away from you until you call me. Don't be angry.
Just give the matter some cool thought." Jamsie brightened slightly.
But fatigue took over. He fell on the bed, and in a few minutes was
fast asleep.

It was about seven o'clock on Saturday morning when he awoke
quietly. He was sure that some sound had awakened him. He listened
for a few moments. Then he heard a rustling and scraping sound from
the closet where Ponto had been the previous night.

Jamsie grew tense and suspicious. What was Ponto up to now? He
tiptoed over, stood listening a moment, then jerked the sliding door of
the closet aside. What he saw galvanized him with a disgust and
outrage he had never felt before, even in his worst times with Ponto.
Ponto was sitting on top of the old icon, picking away at the bits of
mosaic that composed the face of the Virgin. Already the eyes were
two sightless black holes, and Ponto was working on the mouth.

When Jamsie looked in at him, he stopped in a leisurely fashion, one
fingernail curled around a mosaic fragment.

"We won't be needing this garbage, Jamsie, will we, you and I?" He
smiled self-assuredly. The smell wafted around Jamsie's nostrils. "After
all, I can't spend the night with this thing beside me, now, can I?"
Ponto smirked.

Jamsie saw red. All the resentment that had piled up inside him
since his early teens — his anger at being frightened, his frustration
about that "funny-lookin' face," his disappointment with his father
and mother, his final desire to be rid of Ponto and his importunings, his
perpetual loneliness — all burst out from his inner self, flooding his
mind with a nausea against knowing anything more about life. In that
moment his will went rigid with a firm decision that pointed him to
dying and death as his only release and hope of rest.

For some seconds he stood swaying from side to side, his head
aching. Then he broke into the desperate rage that propelled him like
a wild man, swearing and cursing out loud, as he bolted down the
front steps to his car.

THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER

There was nothing very unusual about Father Mark A.'s childhood or
about his family. Mark is a native New Yorker. His father, still alive, is
a Yankee from Maine who settled in New York after World War I. His

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 2Q3

mother, now dead, was a Kelly from Tennessee, Her family had come
over from Ireland to America in the late eighteenth century. She had
been educated in Kansas City. When she came to New York to stay a
while with relatives, she met her husband. He worked in a large
accounting firm.

Mark was the third of five children. His two brothers still live in
New York. One of his sisters married a Swiss manufacturer and lives in
Zurich. The other sister, a missionary nun, was in the Philippines when
World War II broke out. She survived in a Japanese concentration
camp, but she was badly weakened and died in Manila after the war
was over.

All in all, no one could have guessed that a man of Mark's normal
and uneventful background would be the one person who could not
only believe, but understand Jamsie's predicament, or that Mark's
father's rather prosaic profession as an accountant would be the
chance link to complete the chain of circumstances.

As a young man, after a year and a half of college, Mark entered the
diocesan seminary. Seven years later, in 1928, along with eight other
men, he became a priest. He spent ten years as an assistant in four
parishes of the New York diocese. He became known as a hard worker
and a very effective priest. He was practical rather than mystical, an
activist decades before that was fashionable, and very hard to
discourage. Those who knew him then recall him as bouncy, almost
jaunty, with clear blue eyes, quick gestures, ready words, sudden
flare-ups of temper and equally quick returns of good humor.

Mark himself tells how in those early years life always seemed to
him to be made up of "scenarios." Each situation was composed of
people and objects. You assessed the people, got to know the objects,
and plotted your course of action, your "scenario," for that situation.
Mark shunned any wishy-washy ideas about "motivations" or any
"mystical realities." To many of his contemporaries he seemed to have
a shallow and brittle approach. And, indeed, Mark now admits that in
those early years it was as though his inner self was covered with a
hard, protective rind that nothing pierced. He was impervious to any
emotional appeal; and he was not held up or influenced by the
intangibles of a situation.

When Mark was about to be moved to his fourth parish, his,
ecclesiastical superiors offered him a choice: a parish in the suburbs, or
one in the center of midtown Manhattan. Mark chose without
hesitation to work in the heart of the city. And for the next two years

294 THE CASES

he experienced a new set of problems, totally different from those he
had been confronting in the outlying parishes where he had already
served.

At that moment in its history, just prior to World War II, New York
was a mecca of sorts, and not merely for those with financial and
economic interests. Serviced by 21 tunnels, 20 bridges, 16 ferries, 6
major airlines, New York received 115,000 visitors on an average day
and an additional 270,000 out-of-town delegates who came to 500
annual conventions. Through trunkline railways, buslines, airlines,
highways, they poured into the city and, as one statistician of that time
calculated, on any one given night the hotel bedsheets in use would
have covered 840 acres of Central Park.

The visitors could stay in any one of 460 hotels with a total of over
112,000 rooms costing anything from 254; in the Bronx to $50 per day
at the Ritz. And, with or without the courteous and patient help of the
eight young ladies in Macy's City Information Bureau, they found
their way to one or another of New York's 9,000 restaurants, where
thev ordered their heart's desire from Irish stew, Japanese sukiyaki,
and Creole gumbo, to Swedish smorgasbord, Budapest salami, and
Cephalonian afgalimono,

"Hard-boiled New York is just a three-minute egg" rhapsodized the
Convention and Visitors Bureau in one of its blurbs. Visitors rapidly
discovered the soft center of that marvelous city. But Mark discovered
that there was also a smell of human suffering and degradation.

Marks parish was in the center of the tourist and hotel area.
Between chambermaids, bellhops, desk clerks, cashiers, stewards,
chefs, waiters and waitresses, and kitchen help, Mark calculated that
there were 50,000 to 75,000 men and women whose hours were
irregular and long. They went to bed when most church services were
starting. Many were holding down two jobs at the same time. There
was no way for these men and women to keep religion as part of
hotel-life schedules. But it was such a hidden problem — or at least one
nobody would normally think of — that it was practically neglected by
every church.

What heightened both the plight and the peril of those neglected
people in Mark's eyes was the web of organized crime — mainly in drug
traffic, prostitution, and the numbers game— into which many were
willy-nilly drawn. From simple steering of individual visitors to
pimping for one or another of the several madams and their parlor
houses: from simple bet collecting to bet agenting; from drug running

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 295

to drug peddling and distributing; the road in every case was easy to
find and too attractive not to try. Even with the Seabury investigation
in 1930 and the breakup of the Luciano syndicate by Thomas Dewey
some time later, there was no real cessation of this traffic in crime and
vice.

Mark's father, as a certified accountant, handled the affairs of some
major hotels in New York City. When Mark took up his new post, his
father provided him with introductions to some of his friends and
clients in the area. It was exactly the opening Mark needed in order to
get to know the conditions in the hotels and restaurants, and to talk
often and easily with the personnel. His factual mind seized on the
salient elements, and his priestly experience and instincts indicated to
him what could be done to meet the religious needs of the hotel and
restaurant workers.

By the time his next tour of duty came up for consideration two
years later, he had his mind more or less made up as to what he wished
to do.

In August 1938 he got his chance. He had a long discussion with his
superiors. He had a simple proposal to make: to undertake a special
mission as chaplain extraordinary to the hotel and restaurant personnel
in New York City. As Mark presented the case, it must have sounded
like asking to go as missionary to savage lands. The superiors were
impressed with his analysis of the situation. They were not difficult to
persuade. The decision was made, and Mark went to live in a midtown
parish rectory. He was relieved of all duties in that parish. It was to be
merely his home base.

His new parish actually lay in every hotel in Manhattan and
Brooklyn Heights. He divided this parish into six areas based on a
rough grouping of hotels. The Grand Central area was centered on the
Commodore and the Biltmore. The Penn Station area had the New
Yorker as its center point. Times Square was relatively self-contained.
The East Side was dominated by the Waldorf-Astoria. The Central
Park group centered around the Plaza and the Sherry Netherlands.
Brooklyn Heights centered mainly on the 2,641-room St. George.

But Mark's beat was not exclusively hotels, and it definitely was not
all first class. He knew restaurants, nightclubs, swing joints, dives,
second-, third-, and no-class hotels. He was as familiar as the
"regulars" in the Paradise Cabaret on Broadway and in the Cotton
Club on 48th Street (where, as he recalls, "50 Tall Tan Girls" danced
to Cab Calloway's music). He knew Billy Rose's Casino de Paree, and

2g6 THE CASES

was well known at swing joints such as the Onyx, the Famous Door,
the Hickory House.

It was not surprising that Mark got to know some of New York's
best chefs (and some of the worst!). Partly as a means to help him
reach the hearts and minds of some of his "parish," Mark began to
take an interest in cooking. One fine day he even found he had a
genuine talent for cooking and that he had a real interest in it.

It would not be long before he found that this was not the only part
of his new life that would reach inside and become part of him always.

Mark was on a late-night call — ordinary for his new beat — when he
had his first close brush with a force that would later become the focus
of all his efforts. It was at the bedside of a young prostitute who had
been found bleeding and unconscious in a vacant lot near Ninth
Avenue and 43rd Street. This and Sugar Hill in Harlem, where the
mulattoes plied their trade, were the cheapest and the most dangerous
areas in prostitution. Mark never went there except on urgent call.

When he entered the ill-lit room where the girl lay, her mother was
there. She indicated the little cot in the semidarkness of one corner.
The girl was moaning in pain. In the shadows at the foot of the cot
Mark could see the figure of a man wearing a hat and overcoat, hands
thrust in his pockets. As Mark approached the cot, the man took out
one hand and held it up in an arresting motion. Mark stopped.

"Who is this?'' Mark asked the girl's mother in a whisper.

She shook her head. "I don't know, Father. He used to be with her
now and then. He came in a few moments ago. I thought he . . ." She
trailed off helplessly.

Mark was now close enough to see the girl's eyes in the semidark-
ness. They were open and fixed on the man at the foot of the cot. The
little light thrown by the single bulb in the room picked up the oddest
expression in her eyes. Mark's mind flashed in a split-second memory
to a pet rabbit he had had as a boy. One day he found the rabbit
huddled and shivering staring at the cat that hovered by its cage. The
ugly glitter in the cat's eyes — its superiority, its mysterious pull on
him, its cruelty and disdain — was hypnotic. The fear that paralyzed
the rabbit was dreadful and pathetic.

"She doesn't need you."

The words came from the man standing at the foot of the cot. The
accent was normal. The tone was authoritative. There was no hint of
hostility, just utter finality.

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 297

Mark fumbled for his crucifix and the little bottle of holy water he
always carried. He had decided in that instant to give the girl a
blessing and to leave it at that. He was not begging for trouble.
Perhaps she was not even Catholic.

''That is enough."

The same voice again, but this time the tone held a definite menace.
There was an implicit "or else" in those three words.

Mark was puzzled. Perhaps the man did not understand. He turned
and faced the dark figure. It seemed to withdraw deeper into the
shadows.

"But I'm . . ." Mark began by way of explanation.

But he never finished the sentence. The entire "scenario" as he had
seen it up to that moment disappeared. It all became clear to him. The
hard rind seemed to have been peeled off of his inner self; and he
became wholly sensitive to what lay behind the "scenario" facing
him — the girl, the man, the old woman, the dingy room, and the
peculiar atmosphere enveloping all three of them. He was instantly
aware of multiple relationships stretching taut like invisible cords
among all present.

He drew back almost in shock at what he now understood. He knew
that somehow the girl was in thrall to that man. And he knew it was
far beyond the thralldom of a prostitute to her pimp. Somehow the
man could assert his claim with a brutal authority.

The girl's mother touched Mark on the arm. They left the room.
Outside, their conversation was brief.

"No, Father," she answered his question. "He's not her pimp." She
looked at him with eyes full of despair. "I thought you'd get to her
before they arrived."

"They?" echoed Mark with a new sense of shock. The mother
nodded her head and stared steadily at him. He made a move to go
back in.

"No." She laid a hand gently but firmly on his arm. "No. You're still
young. You don't know what you're up against. You can't deal with
anything like this. Yet." And then, already moving away from Mark to
the door of the apartment, "Save yourself, Father. She's already in
their grip."

She opened the door, and then closed it between them before he
could ask any more questions.

"You can't deal with it."

2g8 THE CASES

He never forgot the woman's words. But it took him some months
and many experiences before he began to understand that he was
more than once up against cases of possession. Sometimes the
situations resembled that of the dying girl, but not always.

At the end of the year Mark went to his superiors again and asked to
speak to the official exorcist of the diocese. There was none, he was
told, at that particular moment. But, said the official with whom Mark
talked, if any cases of possession came up, they would call Mark in. He
said this with the jocularity that is so often the sign of total ignorance.
After all, the official added, with what Mark had been through, and if
Mark's suspicions were true, he already had more experience than
anyone else they knew.

The official's tone may have been light, but the result of the
conversation was serious. Mark was now official exorcist of his diocese.

With intermittent breaks in his routine and some trips to other parts
of the country and to Canada, Mark's ministry in New York lasted for
24 years. During that time he developed his knowledge and skill in
dealing with cases of possession (real and counterfeit — he always said
that out of every hundred claimants there might be one genuine case).
But, more importantly, he became aware of an entire world of the
spirit about which he had been taught nothing in the seminary and
which seemed to flourish as the dark underside of life in his beloved
New York.

Mark still gave the impression of jaunty objectivity. But now there
was a deep underlay of awareness and shrewdness. And he was open
and sensitive to the slightest trace of diabolism, while highly skeptical
of all claims of diabolical "attention."

It was a source of some amazement to his close associates and
superiors that he did not go the way of most exorcists. A few years'
active ministry in Exorcism, and the majority paled, as it were: they
seemed to wither in a variety of ways; some by illness, others by
premature aging; others still because they seemed to have lost the will
to live.

"Most of us crawl away and die somewhere quietly," Mark said as
we talked one evening. I knew he was right.

"Why not you, Mark?"

"Well, you see," Mark began jokingly, "I have this great pal
upstairs, and when I start into one of those exorcism businesses, he
comes along and holds my hand." But at the end of the sentence
Mark's eyes were away over my head and his expression was not in the

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 299

least jocular. It was luminous and fixed on some object or person 1
could not identify.

One colleague of Mark's with whom I talked had been a close friend
since their seminary days. They had alwavs exchanged confidences.
But all that had changed. He told me he had long since realized that
Mark's inner life had been invaded by a dimension of which he knew
very little and at which he could onlv guess.

Mark seemed all of a sudden very old and deeplv weary to his
friend. For most priests, as for most lay people, the world of the
exorcist is totally unknown. The toll it takes is incommunicable and
can pass unnoticed for years, even by those nearest to the exorcist.

But in those days Mark was still a young man. He lost most of his
hair before he was thirty-five, but so did his two brothers. His health
remained excellent. He exercised frequently, and rarely seemed to be
affected adversely by his job. For two or three weeks after his first
brush with an evil spirit, he seemed retired into himself and to be in
deep thought. Then he snapped out of it. When he came across his
first case of a "familiar" spirit (the subject was a pimp arrested for a
multiple murder), he was completely befuddled, as he now admits.
"Evil was very hard to trace, ' he recalls. "And I had two psychiatrists
telling me that this was a classical case of multiple personality/' In
spite of the psychiatrists' opinions (which seemed to be somewhat
confused, anyway, Mark recalls) and his own puzzlement about the
case, Mark decided to try Exorcism because of four cardinal "symp-
toms": the physical disturbances accompanying the presence of the
pimp, the pimp's physically uncontrollable and violent reaction to the
crucifix, to the name of Jesus, and to holy water.

The only type of possession that produced a strange and unwonted
tension in Mark was what he came to discern as "the perfectly
possessed." His colleagues learned of such cases from Mark only
because from time to time they sensed a peculiar tension very unusual
in Mark. And occasionally they questioned him, thinking that he had
had some accident, or that he was in some danger, or that they might
help solve some problem. What they saw in Mark at such times, as
they or some of them came to learn, was not a nervous tension, but
rather an intense watchfulness and wariness which, his friends felt,
was directed even at them. At those times he gave the impression of
extreme guardedness. He was tight-lipped, gimlet-eved, and curt in his
conversation. When they finally were able to draw him out, and he
gave them some idea of the condition of those who, he found, were

300 THE CASES

perfectly possessed, they were taken aback by his totally negative
attitude. This, too, was very unusual in Mark.

To all questions as to why there was no room for mercy or hope in
such cases, Mark would try to recount some of his experiences with
the perfectly possessed. But most of all he reflected the reality of the
experience in a stare of such stark and concentrated realization that no
one could pursue the subject further with him.

At the age of sixty Mark asked for a sabbatical. His health was still
good, but something was changing in him. The years had piled up
inside him an accumulation of disgusts and reticences that finally even
he could not ignore.

His preference for a temporary location fell on San Francisco,
where he had many friends and acquaintances. By April 1963, he was
in residence there. He was given little by way of duties in the parish
where he was staying, and spent most of his time in the open air.

But his compassion and his professional interests were aroused when
Lila Wood, one of his acquaintances, talked to him at length one day
about Jamsie Z., whom she had recently met at the broadcasting studio
where she worked, and who not only seemed deeply troubled, but was
more or less politely shunned by everybody.

Mark asked Lila many questions, until she had given him a fairly
detailed picture of Jamsie 's odd behavior. Even from this secondhand
description, Mark was pretty certain that in Jamsie he was probably
up against a case of a "familiar."

What distressed Mark most in his own first long discussion with
Jamsie was his strong impression that, short either of a miracle or of
Exorcism, Jamsie Z. was on the high road either to complete possession
by his insistent ''familiar" or to suicide as the easiest way of ridding
himself once and for all of his misery. Mark knew the symptoms. And,
more importantly, he had acquired over the years an instinct for the
crisis point of "familiar" possession. The instinct was like that
developed by painters for color and hue and chromatic intensity. That
instinct could not be taught, but could only be learned by experience.

The person harassed by the "familiar's" advances, in the extreme
stages of that harassment and just before the final outcome, generally
begins to have dim perceptions of some more potent figure or force, as
a greater shadow thrown by the lesser "familiar" or that which follows
on the "familiar."

After Jamsie Z.'s unmistakable experience at the reservoir, Mark
knew several things: there was no doubt in his mind that Ponto was

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 3OI

totally real; there was no doubt that he, Mark, would be making a fatal
mistake to be put off by the bizarre and often unbelievable predica-
ment of Jamsie, or to dismiss his rages and antics as "psycho"
behavior; and there was no doubt that Jamsie had reached the critical
point.

The exorcism involving Jamsie Z. and Uncle Ponto lacked much of
the violent, scatological, and pornographic elements that accompany
other types and cases of possession. The struggle was at a different
level, involved a different genre of spirit, and concerned a possession
whose intensity was achieved over most of a lifetime.

Mark had come to know by experience that the degree of
intelligence and knowledge that generally seems to characterize
"familiars" is very low, sometimes approaching the level of half-witted
children. "Familiars" seem to have only a small quantum of factual
knowledge and very little power of foresight or anticipation. They
appear to be bound by cast-iron rules and to be in strict dependence
on a "higher" intelligence about which they talk frequently and to
which Ponto, for example, had to have recourse at every crisis.

The "familiar" gives the impression of a weak mirror reflection, so
to speak, of a greater one. So great seems this dependence of the
"familiar" that it never directly engages the exorcist.

This attribute of the "familiar" spirit in particular complicated
Mark's efforts. It meant he was working by proxy, or on a secondhand
basis. Jamsie was the only one able to hear and see Uncle Ponto, and
Jamsie had to verbalize it all for Mark. Ponto could hear and see Mark,
but it was only when Ponto's "superior" took over that Mark was
dealing directly with the evil spirit.

In excerpting Jamsie Z.'s exorcism, the choice fell primarily on those
exchanges that bring out two points: first, the process of Jamsie's
possession, and second, the extremely complex relationships implied
by this kind of possession — Ponto's relationship as the "familiar" to
Jamsie as the possessed, on the one hand, and the relationship of both
Jamsie and Ponto to the "superior" spirit, on the other hand.

Mark's past experience of possession by "familiar" spirits had taught
him one principal difference between the exorcism of a "familiar" and
that of the other kinds of evil spirit. Other types of possessed find
themselves almost completely bereft of their freedom. They are saved
solely by an influx of grace, channeled through the ministrations of the
exorcist. But the victim of the "familiar" spirit is quasi-possessed by

302 THE CASES

the ''familiar," until he gives final consent to the "familiar" and to a
"sharing" of himself. Even then, the loss of control over one's inner
self does not appear so deep that contact with the exorcist is to all
intents and purposes impossible for him, as it often is in other types of
possession where the evil spirit "hides" behind the identity of the
victim and responds instead of the victim. In this type of possession, it
is almost as though the "superior" spirit "hides" behind the "familiar"
instead.

Being relatively free, then, and not out of contact with the exorcist,
the victim of the "familiar" must be active in his own exorcism. He, in
fact, must be the final source of his own liberation by accepting the
healing and salvation from God. And, in this sense, the exorcee in such
a case is the one who enables the exorcist to complete his work.

Mark spent quite a lot of time explaining to Jamsie this peculiarity
of his forthcoming exorcism. Jamsie, like many others, had never
reflected on his freedom. Free will was just a vague and abstract term
for him. It took Mark a good deal of explaining to get Jamsie to
understand that he had to exercise an option. This was the basic option
of free will. Mark could only indicate to Jamsie when he should make a
tremendous effort of will. Only Mark would be in a position to know
the precise moment at which Jamsie could most effectively make that
choice.

A peculiarity of this exorcism had to do with a ploy of Ponto's that
had the same mischievous quality about it as many of the antics that
had worn Jamsie down so much. The exorcism could be performed
only after the sun went down. In fact, it was not always possible to
start immediately at sundown; Ponto might not respond or appear for
quite a while. And it was not possible to continue the exorcism after
sunrise. This was not considered by Mark to be characteristic of this
type of possession — just a mark of malice on the part of Uncle Ponto
and his "superior." The night held terrors for Jamsie from which he
was free during the daytime. That was a plus for Ponto and his
"superior."

On the other hand, during daylight hours, Mark had ample time to
consult the psychiatrist who had dealt with Jamsie. He also had Jamsie
thoroughly checked by a doctor of his own choosing.

The psychiatrist remained in his unwavering conclusion that Jamsie
was not suffering from anything like paranoia or schizophrenia. And
finally during the exorcism itself Mark found that the Uncle Ponto

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 303

Jamsie saw and heard informed him accurately about things which
Jamsie could neither have known nor guessed.

Each session of the exorcism took place in a basement room of the
rectory where there was virtually no probability of interruption by the
outside world. Jamsie sat on a kitchen chair at a table except for the
last portion of the exorcism. The assistants were four in number: a
younger priest Mark had pressed into his service, two young friends of
his who worked in a law firm together, and a local doctor whose
judgment Mark felt he could trust.

Jamsie's exorcism lasted over five days.

Mark always began each session with the Salve Regina, a prayer to
the Virgin, and he ended with the Anima Christi, a prayer to Jesus.
Only in the last two sessions were there any violent objections
channeled through Jamsie to these prayers.

The first three sessions of the exorcism were full of irrelevant
discourses by Uncle Ponto (all put into words by Jamsie). Mark bided
his time and was certain he could afford to wait. He knew that sooner
or later Uncle Ponto would break down and his "superior" would have
to intervene.

This is what happened in the fourth session.

UNCLE PONTO

The time was 4:15 a.m., just an hour before sunrise. Mark had started
the fourth session a little after midnight. He had pounded Ponto with
questions through Jamsie for four hours, but Ponto had dodged them
with prattling and nonsense.

At this late moment in the session, Mark saw Jamsie straighten up in
the chair and look to one side. To Mark it was obvious: Jamsie was
seeing more than Ponto now. This was the first flaw, the first sign of
weakness, the first indication Ponto's "superior" might be coming to
his aid. Maybe Mark's pounding with questions had not been so wide
of the mark after all.

Mark's mind raced back over his most recent questions and
hammerings at Uncle Ponto. He could think of only one thing that
might have evoked Uncle Ponto's "superior." In answer to a spate of
nonsensical remarks on Ponto's part, Mark had said in tones of utter
disdain: "We have now come to the end of your intelligence. You have

304 THE CASES

no more defense and no more explanations why this human soul
should become 'familiarized' by you. You are repeating yourself. You
are a nothing and worse than a nothing compared to the power of
Jesus. In his name I tell you: you have to go forth and leave this person
and go back to the one who sent you. You and he are defeated by
Jesus."

'It's the Shadow, Father," Jamsie was staring, almost transfixed.
The eyes of the pathetic young prostitute of nearly 30 years before,
staring at the man in the shadows at the foot of her bed, seemed to
stare for a moment from Jamsie's face, so similar was the look.

Mark went on inexorably. "You are completely at the mercy of
Jesus, you and all associated with you. Jamsie, however, is protected.
You have no greater one, no one to make up for your stupidity."

He glanced at Jamsie: "What is it, Jamsie? Tell me! Quick!"

Mark was afraid Jamsie would be stilled by fright, or by some power
Ponto held over him, or — -as had happened in other such cases — that
Jamsie would fall unconscious before he could clue Mark in.

"He's talking rubbish, Father," Jamsie answered with difficulty.

Jamsie began to draw short breaths, as if breathing was now difficult
for him. Then he started to cringe and draw into himself. His hands
went to his neck as if to support his head. His face turned red. The
doctor looked at Mark but made no move yet. The two young
assistants stirred, ready to jump to Jamsie's aid. Mark quieted them
with a gesture, then went on.

"We think Jamsie had better die with the blessing of the Church
than live on in such a condition."

"No! No!" It was Jamsie, repeating for Mark what Ponto said, but
with great difficulty. "I cannot fail. I must have my home. They will
not allow that Person . . ." Jamsie broke off and started to gag and
choke.

Mark went on. "We think Jesus, the Lord of all things, is coming to
expel you, you puny and filthy being, expel you and send you back
defenseless and stupid where you came from. Jesus cannot be
opposed."

Mark stopped. Jamsie's eyes had closed. His hands fell to his sides in
a helpless gesture. He started to slither from the chair to the floor.

"Quick!" Mark said to the assistants. "Get him on to the cot."

As he slipped off the chair, Jamsie's body lodged between the chair
and the table, resting not quite entirely on the floor. His fists were
clenched and held tightly to his neck, his head was sunk on his chest,

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 305

his shoulders hunched, his knees bent, his toes splayed out straight and
rigid. He was a twisted mass of hard angles and awkward curves. At
first, the assistants and Mark thought Jamsie had merely got jammed at
a difficult angle between the chair and the table. But after a moment's
effort and examination, they realized that they could not budge his
body. It was heavier than anything they could move. They shifted the
chair and table away. Jamsie fell heavily to the ground as if drawn by
an invisible magnet. Throughout all this his eyes were open and staring
sightlessly.

Perspiring and helpless, the assistants looked up at Mark.

He held up the crucifix and in a loud voice said: "I command you,
Ponto, I command you in the name of Jesus! Let go of this creature of
God. Cease to pin him to the ground. Let go, I command you!"

Jamsie's body suddenly loosened. His head lolled to one side, his
eyes turned upward until only the whites showed, his hands un-
clenched, and his arms rolled to his sides lifelessly.

Quickly the assistants picked him up and laid him on the cot.

"Tie him down," said Mark. Then to the doctor: "Take a look, Tom.
Just make sure, will you?"

The doctor checked Jamsie's pulse and looked at Mark forebodingly.
"Take it easy, Mark. He's very low. I have no means of knowing how
low without more thorough checking. Take it easy."

Mark nodded. He knew he was close to a break in Ponto's
resistance. He motioned to them all to stand back. He took the
holy-water flask from the young priest and, raising his hand, faced
Jamsie as he lay on the cot.

Mark sprinkled holy water on Jamsie in three deliberate gestures —
he looked like a man throwing a grenade each time. And each time he
pronounced in quick succession the words of his greatest reproach. He
was addressing the "superior."

"Lurking Coward. Filthy Traitor. Defeated Rebel. Come out from
behind your miserable secundo, your toady. Come out. And be shamed
once more. Once more be defeated by Jesus. Be thrust into the Pit."

As his assistants saw him at that moment, Mark had completely
changed. Up to this point, he had spoken softly, cautiously, every word
and expression coming out of him after a weighty pause. Now he
seemed suddenly to be a foot taller. At the same time he seemed coiled
up. His face was hard; his mouth barely opened as he spoke; and, on
the tape, there is a sudden, unexpected sense of onslaught and fierce
hatred and contempt in Mark's voice.

306 THE CASES

In answer to Mark, there came a slow and very weak moaning from
Jamsie. It gradually picked up in speed and volume, growing higher in
pitch and deeper in resonance. Jamsie's body shook and vibrated
beneath the leather straps holding him to the cot.

"Or are you a secundo of Jesus also?" Mark continued in the same
deadly tone. "A real secundo of his triumph? Traitor and Father of
Lies, promiser of vain victories? Are you also broken by . . ."

Mark got no further. His gibes had hit home. Through Jamsie's open
mouth all present in the room could now hear distant and mincing
words, each one peeled out of some acidulous throat, licked by a
contemptuous tongue, and thrown in a leisurely and deliberate fashion
at their ears like sharp darts of scorn. They all felt that scorn. And they
all feared.

"Clot of mud. Little puppy of fucking animals. Talking beast.
Praying with one end and excreting with the other. Depending on
mercy. Asking for forgiveness . . ."

The contempt was like burning acid to those listening.

". . . smelling like a dunghill. Rotting into a juicy cadaver. Be
silent! Retire! Leave this animal to us, the Most Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-gh . . ."
The one syllable of the last word was strung out in a long note that had
a wailing quality of regret. Mark noted it, and took the only way out:
attack.

"Declare yourself, in the name of Jesus!" A long pause. Jamsie's face
was bloodless, drawn. The young priest was about to say something
when that voice spoke again.

"We have never yielded to any power. And we will never ..."

"Then we will begin the exorcism, the cursing out of you, the
expulsion of you and all of you in the name of . . ."

"No-o-o-o-o-!" Again, that long-drawn-out wailing note. The voice
had lost its contempt. There was a sudden urgency in it, almost a
craven note.

Mark had broken a hole in the attack, he knew, and he jumped in
with both feet.

"Your name!" Mark's command came before that long wailing "No"
was finished.

"Names are for . . ."

"Your name! By the authority of Jesus' Church, your name, I say!"
Mark was not shouting, yet his voice filled every part of the room.

"We are . . ." Again the wailing note, but this time with a
growl-like resonance. "We are all of the Kingdom. No man can know

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 307

the name. We are alllllllll ..." The ''1" echoed and echoed until it
finally died away.

"What shall we call you then?" Mark was still insistent. "In Jesus'
name, what name will you obey? In Jesus' name, what name will you
obey?"

"Multus-a-um. Magus-a-um. Gross-grosser-grossesste. Seventy times.
Seventy-seven Legion. All . . ."

"Multus? Shall you obey this name, in the name of . . ."

Mark was interrupted by Jamsie. He was suddenly awake, his eyes
wide open and bloodshot, his body pushing against the straps, his legs
kicking.

"Sit on his legs," Mark said. The two assistants did so.

"UNCLE PONTO! UNCLE PONTO!" Jamsie was screaming at the
top of his voice with a desperation that froze them all. "UNCLE
PONTO! DON'T GO. IF YOU GO, WHAT WILL THEY DO TO
ME? UNCLE PONTO! UNCLE PONTO!"

Mark drew back and thought quickly.

Jamsie continued blabbering incoherently. Then, in a lower tone, as
if wearied by his recent efforts: "Yes . . . thought you were after my
. . . no, please . . . don't do that and . . . night . . . radio with Jay
Beedem . . ."

Mark was thinking. He turned away. The others could see his face
cloaked over in a withdrawn look. For a few seconds he seemed to be
elsewhere, to be totally abstracted from the situation. Then he
rounded unexpectedly like a whiplash, his voice rising in anger.

"Multus! Multus! Answer us in the name of Jesus. Answer! Answer!
By dismissing Ponto! Answer!" Mark waited for a moment. Then he
repeated his command.

"Answer! By dismissing Ponto! Answer!"

Jamsie's eyes clouded over, his head fell back, his body went limp.
Mark had his answer. He knew: to all intents and purposes Ponto was
gone; he was now dealing directly with Ponto's "superior." Mark's aim
now was clearly to get all the information he could from that
"superior," to find out in particular as much as he could about the
tangled lines of the attempted possession of Jamsie and thus clear the
way for a successful expulsion of the evil spirit. Multus, like all evil
spirits, could not stand the light of truth.

The doctor pried open one of Jamsie's eyes, felt his pulse, and
nodded slowly, warningly to Mark.

Mark fired out a series of questions.

308 THE CASES

''When did you start working on Jamsie?"

"He was chosen before he was born."

"When did he know you were after him?"

"He knew long before he knew he knew."

"How did you gain entry to him?"

"He wanted it. Those who might have taught him otherwise, we
corrupted. But he chose to be entered. Only one opposed us."

"Who?"

"He never knew him."

"Who?"

"His father's father. He was given that role by . . ." The voice
wailed away in the same regretful note of sorrow.

"By whom?" Mark insisted. No answer.

"By whom?" Mark repeated the question, and added: "Or shall I
tell you by whom?"

"By that Person who is beyond notice by us. By the Claimer of all
adoration. By the one who never received and will never receive our
adoration . . ."

"Did you make Jamsie see the 'funny-lookin' face'?"

"No. His protector. We would never frighten him away. We are
more powerful than that. It was his protector trying to warn him."

Now the tone had changed. A new truculence had entered it. Mark
heard it and whitened. He had presumed too much. The voice
continued gratingly. It was as if the owner of that voice saw Mark's
discomfiture. A hail of sharp questions rained down on his ears, and his
mind started to boggle under the weight of the images they evoked.

"Do you think you have escaped us, Mushroom-Souper? Do you
think that one of these filthy whores didn't change you? How many
times have you lusted after them? Remember the Harlem house and
the seventeen-year-old? Remember when she shoved her pussy at you
and you saw the black hair glistening on those tawny thighs?
Remember your hard-on? Ha! Ha! Priest! You fucking priest! You little
burning cock! Ha! Ha! Your prayers were of no avail then. And your
Virgin with her lily-white conception was of no avail. Or did you
remember to tie the rosary around it and hold it down? Remember!
Remember? Remember your wet dreams? We do. So we do. And
you do! Don't you think a bit of you belongs already to us?
Prieeeeeeeeeest!"

Mark was beaten temporarily. He staggered back. And then he saw
Jamsie: both eyes open, his mouth split in a wide, full-toothed grin. He

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 309

was listening and laughing. Mark got the message. Ponto and his
"superior" were leaving.

The young priest tapped Mark on the shoulder and pointed to the
window. Thin pencils of sunlight were pointing in from the outside.
Another bright and hot day had started.

Mark heaved a sigh. Another half hour, he thought, and he would
have nailed down the "superior." "Okay. Let's wrap it up for now,
until tonight." He had recovered his nonchalance. "We meet at 10:00
p.m. sharp. Get some rest. Tonight's the night."

Then they did what they had done each day before this. Mark
recited the Anima Christi. Afterward, he went upstairs and said his
Mass. The four assistants took turns watching over Jamsie. In an hour
or so after that, he woke up with no memory of what had happened
the previous night.

On the last night of the exorcism Mark had a plan to precipitate
events if Ponto delayed very long in coming. He had a trump card up
his sleeve. There was a certain risk in playing that card; and in what he
proposed to do he was incurring dangers on himself as well as on
Jamsie.

But the alternative was almost as stark and forbidding. Jamsie was
getting progressively weaker in his resolution to undergo the rite of
Exorcism, to resist, to survive. He could collapse completely at any
moment. He could, indeed, fall into a comatose state as a prelude to an
early death — Mark had known such cases — or he could emerge in a
state of complete shock. In either condition, Jamsie would be
inaccessible. And Mark himself would be left forever with a nagging
doubt about Jamsie's fate. There would be no way of knowing if he
had become one of the perfectly possessed, immune to any touch of
therapy, isolated from any saving intervention, trussed, mummified,
and locked away safely by the evil power that possessed him perfectly.
Or if he had gone insane in a strictly psychological sense of the word.
In any such condition it would be impossible to know how much he
perceived of the other world, or if he could pray and exercise his belief
and thus cooperate with God's grace for ultimate salvation.

Mark fervently wished to avoid the dubious and dangerous charac-
ter of such an ending to the case of Jamsie Z.

Mark's trump card lay in a fact that had emerged during his routine
inquiries about Jamsie and his general background.

Jamsie had been baptized at home by his grandmother over the

310 THE CASES

kitchen sink. Pie had been born in a very weakened condition. The
attending doctor had despaired of his survival, and his very pious
Armenian grandmother had baptized him, because she feared the
priest would be too late. From what Mark could find out, there was a
reasonable doubt that jamsie's baptism had been valid.

jamsie's grandmother had known very little English and she
certainly did not know the words of baptism in English. It was she who
had poured water over his baby head. But, it appeared, the Irish
midwife who was helping Lydia, Jamsie's mother, in the childbirth,
had pronounced the words of Baptism.

If this were so, then the Baptism had indeed been invalid. The same
person who pours the water must pronounce the words. Otherwise, no
Baptism of that kind is valid. The baby is not baptized, has not become
a Christian.

To create even further doubt, the parish priest, who had finally
arrived much later, never bothered to correct the doubt and baptize
Jamsie provisionally. Such "conditional baptism" is usually conferred
in such cases. But, for whatever reason, apparently this had not been
done.

Now Mark proposed to baptize Jamsie. Instinctively, as an exorcist,
Mark knew that the "rejection" of Evil Spirit implied in Baptism of an
adult was something a mere "familiar" could not handle. The
"superior" would have to intervene in a new way in order to protect
the common interest of "familiar" and "superior" alike.

And then it was Mark's object to attack the peculiar bond between
the "superior" spirit and its "familiar" spirit. That much done, Mark
would no longer have to deal secondhand; he would have the
"superior" in the open — not temporarily as in the previous sessions,
but as the "responsible party," so to speak. From then on Mark could
handle things as in a more "normal" exorcism.

Having spent, therefore, one hour waiting for Ponto to come, Mark
had Jamsie lie down on the cot, where the assistants strapped him
securely. He now proceeded with the Baptism, Jamsie answering all
the queries which are put to an adult person about to be baptized,
reciting the Creed and making other professions of faith.

This went on for a short while in relative calm, until Jamsie broke
orf in the middle of a sentence. His voice changed, and he said quickly
to Mark: "He's coining back. He's in a terrible state."

Uncle Ponto was obviously with Jarnsie. Mark's plan had worked
that far. He and his assistants listened to one end (Jamsie's) of a bizarre

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 3II

conversation and tried to guess what was said at the other end (Uncle
Ponto's).

"I will not have you in my life." Jamsie was looking over to the door
of the room. He was silent for a few seconds. Then he spoke in a
waspish tone. "What happens on Jupiter and what I could do with
much money — a million bucks — is all hogwash. I want to be left ..."

Now Jamsie was looking at the ceiling, now at the window, now
over toward the door again. "That won't help at . . ." His face
flushed with anger. "But why should I be afraid to die? Others have
had to go."

Mark and the others continued to listen in silence. Evidently Ponto
was in a bad state.

Jamsie broke in: "Mark says Jesus said you're a goddamn liar
and ..." Interrupted, Jamsie looked over in the corner and scowled.
"I'll talk about what I damn well please, and listen . . ."

Then something happened of an abrupt and quite unexpected
nature. Jamsie's eyes grew larger, the whites of the eyes shone. His
face seemed to cave in, to lose some substantive strength. He shrank
back on the couch, into himself.

Mark was by his side in an instant and laid his hand in Jamsie's. It
was a prearranged signal between the two of them. Jamsie had time to
press Mark's fingers lightly, then he started weeping and sobbing.

"It's no use." His fingers let go of Mark's hand. "It's no use. I'm
finished. He's back. They're all back."

Mark took the crucifix and started immediately. When he did,
Jamsie seemed to go to sleep suddenly, his jaw sagging, spittle running
down his chin.

"Multus!"

"Mushroom-Souper!" The words were pronounced with a velvet
smoothness, but icy cold.

"Multus! Answer us. It is you and no one else?"

"Mushroom-Souper, you ludicrous little pigmy. We have our mark
on you. All this hocus-pocus will not keep you or him that be-
longs ..."

"Multus! Answer us!" Mark had the spirit where he wanted it.
"Jamsie's 'familiar' is Ponto. Why do you say he belongs to you? Who
are 'us' then?"

"You smelly ones walk around in bodies of slime and mud and
muck. You say one, two, three, four hundred, seven million, a trillion.
Ha! Ha-Ha!"

312 THE CASES

"Multus! Is Uncle Ponto you? Are you Uncle Ponto?"

"We are spirits. There is no one, two, three, four, hundred, seven
million, a trillion. We are kinds and species. We are spirits! Powers.
Dominations. Centers. Minds. Wills. Forces. Desires."

"Answer in the name of the Church. Answer the questions of Jesus'
authority. Are you Uncle Ponto?"

"Yes! Ha! Ha! No! Ha! Ha!" The laughter froze the blood in the
listeners' veins. It was a rollicking sneer of contempt, no fun in it, no
humor. Then: "Ponto is us without the intelligence of the Claimant."

There was a trap ready to spring on Mark. But Mark knew better
than to ask who the Claimant was. Claimant, Master, Prince,
Leader — it all came down to one being: the supreme intelligence of
evil which had led and which leads all intelligences in revolt against
the truth of God. Mark never felt in all his life that he wanted a direct
tussle with that personage. Deep instinct of his own limitations held
him back from such a step.

Instead, Mark pursued his urgent quest of uncovering the relation-
ship between Uncle Ponto and the Shadow. "But Uncle Ponto uses his
own intelligence on his own account."

"Never." The definitiveness of that word hit them all.

"Ponto's intelligence is subordinate to you."

"Always." The answer was a stony blow. Imperious. Curt.

"And Ponto's will?"

"Those who accepted, those who accept the Claimant, have his will.
Only his will. Only the will. Only the will. The will of the Kingdom.
The will of the will of the will of the will of the will ..." The voice
faded down from a curt, domineering tone to a sniveling, breathed
whisper and died away. Mark detected the sudden influx of fear in it.

The young assistant priest also caught that note of fear, and, in a
kind of victory yell, he leaned forward with a sudden ebullience: "Hit
them hard, Mark!"

Mark rounded on him, his eyes blazing. "Shut your mouth!"

"That is right!" came the mincing tone. "That is exactly right! But
our quarrel is with you, Priest! We have years to deal with this little
virgin and to show ..."

Mark broke in. "You will speak when questioned. Only then. And
you will tell us in the name of Jesus," Mark thundered, his annoyance
with the young priest's mistake filling his voice and channeled at the
spirit, "you will tell us: Jay Beedem, has he consented to your power?"

There was complete silence. Only Jamsie's breathing could be

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 313

heard. Mark had never met Beedem, but he figured oddly in Jamsie's
story, and Mark's nose caught a strange scent there, even from a
distance. He needed to know if there was an essential connection
Beedem had with Ponto or with his "superior" that affected Jamsie.

"Jay Beedem," insisted Mark. "You will tell us when . . ."

"No." It was summary and definitive. "We will not tell you
anything, Priest." Silence again.

"By the authority of the Church and in the name of Jesus,
you ..."

"That Church and that Person have no authority over Jay Beedem.
He is ours. Ours. Ours. Ours. The Kingdom. Ours."

Mark drew a deep breath. This was not new for him, but it always
gave him a sinking feeling to find out that someone was protected by
summary evil, protected even from the touch of grace. He knew better
than to pursue the subject. Once before, about ten years before, he
had tried. And the onslaught that ensued had interrupted the exorcism
(which someone else had to start all over again and finish), and left
Mark literally dumb and deaf for about five weeks. Something vital
had almost died in Mark that time. He had challenged Evil Spirit on its
own secure ground.

He switched to another tack. "Your funny-looking face: what was
the purpose of that?"

"The funny-looking face was not our doing. We do not frighten
those we prospect."

"What result was effected by showing Jamsie that face?"

"By it, his protector wished to acquaint him with the face all take on
who belong to us . . ."

"Was it this," Mark interrupted almost involuntarily, "that stopped
Jamsie at the reservoir? That face?" There was no immediate answer.

Mark got the faintest hint of something strange happening to the
others in the room. He glanced quizzically at his young priest; his face
was beaded with perspiration. Mark paused.

Then all four assistants flung their hands to their ears, their faces
screwed up in expressions of pain.

"Mark, for the love of God, get them to stop that whistling!" the
doctor was shouting at the top of his voice. "It will stun us."

He and the other three started to moan in pain; then all four were
shouting and screaming, their heads and bodies turning this way and
that, backing away from the cot where Mark stood beside Jamsie's
inert body.

314 THE CASES

Mark took a step toward them, but quickly withdrew. He tried
again, and again withdrew. Every time he stepped outside a certain
invisible circle around the cot, his ears were assailed by the most
horrible and deafening hail of high-decibel sound.

As his four assistants writhed and withdrew slowly, they were
looking at Mark, imploring help. He made animated gestures to them
indicating that they should keep backing away. They did so until
finally, within a foot or so of the back wall near the door of the room,
all four suddenly stopped writhing in agony. Their faces lost the lines
of pain and concentrated effort.

They looked at Mark finally as though across a huge distance filled
suddenly with silence and fog. While Mark could see them clearly, he
could not hear them at all. On their side, they could only hear Mark
and see his lips moving and his hands gesturing in a distorted fashion.
It was like looking through frosted glass into a sunlit room; they saw
everything, but unclearly.

Rooted to the opposite side of the room with their bodies to the
wall, it was through this weird medium that his four assistants saw
Mark's final settling of Jamsie's exorcism. It was a shadow play of
horrors for them.

They saw Mark's figure turn partially away from them to face
Jamsie's body on the cot. They saw Mark lift the crucifix. They saw his
lips move and at first heard nothing. Then, as from a great distance
and through a low, rumbling noise like a continuous avalanche of
pebbles down the side of a mountain, they began to hear his voice.

". . . shall be as we bid, because it is in the name of Jesus that we
bid you answer us. Was it the face that stopped Jamsie from suicide?"

Another voice, the one with the mincing words, broke through in a
guttural tone, sharp, decisive, cold, inimical. "Are you interested in
that funny-lookin' face, Priest? Would you like to see it yourself?"

"Answer our question," was Mark's rebuttal to that invitation to be
curious. "Answer it!"

"Yes. Ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-es." The voice was grating out the sounds
grudgingly. "It was that face. We are always present when inferiors
are about to make a killing."

"So every time you were present, Jamsie's protector endeavored to
let him see that face?" There was no answer to this.

Mark went to another point. "Why did you allow Jamsie to see the
. . . the . . . the Shadow?" Mark stumbled over that one, and then
regained his composure. There had been moments in his own life when

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 315

he had been about to make some important decision and, he now
realized with a little shiver, there had been some sort of shadow
present. He had always put it down to something else. But the wisps of
memory disturbed him now. Those moments had been during his
bouncy, jaunty days, his "scenario" days, when everything had to have
a logical and describable cause, and it was all very simple.

"We did not. Notnotnotnotnotnot." The word was a thump of
sorrow and regret and dreadful aching. Mark felt it. He went on,
pressing his questions, still holding the crucifix high.

"Why did a common look exist between the Shadow and Uncle
Ponto and Jay Beedem and the pimp and many others; why did a
common look exist?"

Mark could see a change in Jamsie that his four assistants could not
see through the haze that kept them apart. Jamsie was now wide
awake, but his eyes were not on Mark. They looked up to his left.
Mark was careful to note this, but he kept looking steadily at Jamsie.
He repeated his question. He was getting closer.

"Why the common look? Is this another part of your evil stupidity?"

"Beyond our control." The words came with difficulty. "We also
. . . must submit ... in material things, we . . . also bound . . .
Person beneath contempt holds . . . holds . . . holds . . . holds
..." The voice started to get slurred. "Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-l-l-l-l-l-l-
dsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsds" The voice died away in an angry buzz until
there was no more sound.

"Why the common look?" Mark kept staring at Jamsie, looking for
any hint or clue in his reactions.

Still pinned to the opposite wall, Mark's assistants were suddenly
horror-struck. They shouted and screamed in warning to Mark. He
could not hear, but continued to face Jamsie.

At first what they saw seemed vague, a bulky shape, rearing up
behind Mark, much like a cat standing crookedly on its hind legs, front
paws lifted, claws open and spread-eagled, ears flattened against its
head, mouth opened to hiss.

They heard the distorted rumble of Mark's voice as he continued
the exorcism. There was nothing they could do but watch and pray.

"What do you place in those human beings so that they get that
look?"

And the voice came rasping out in a slow, steady tone: "Obedience
to the Kingdom. They give their will. We fill the soul. What's inside
peers out willy-nilly . . ."

3l6 THE CASES

Jamsie, still strapped down, had raised his head from the bed to
stare at the threatening form behind Mark. It was constantly weaving
back and forward, turning from left to right as if seeking something.
But to Jamsie it was less like a cat and more like a man swathed in
heavy, black clothes. Mark, intent on watching Jamsie, did not follow
the direction of his gaze.

"You have to come out." Mark began his final pounding at the spirit.
"You have to manifest yourself and leave this human being. In the
name of Jesus!"

The assistants, all still at bay, could see both faces — Jamsie's and the
darksome figure's — contorting at this moment. "And not only you, but
your inferior and slave, your Uncle Ponto. Him and all who go with
him. Out! I say! Out with all of you."

Mark's assistants were now in utter panic. All they could see was the
menace to Mark from behind him. They tried to move forward against
the excruciating rain of sound.

"We will never rest until we avenge ourselves on you," the voice
was saying, "we will leave this miserable blob of muck dead when we

go ;!'

"Life and death are not yours to give or take. They belong to Jesus."

Jamsie started at that moment to scream, wild hysteria in his voice.

Mark's ears were filled with that scream; he held the crucifix and
prayed out loud, using only two words: "Jesus! Mercy! Jesus! Mercy!
Jesus! Mercy! Jesus! Mercy! Jesus!"

Then his ears were hit by the agonizing screams of the four
assistants: they had left their sanctuary-prison against the opposite
wall, had penetrated the space between the wall and the cot where
Mark stood beside Jamsie, and were once more writhing under the
impact of the torture that stabbed at their eardrums.

But even through the din of Jamsie's shouts and his assistants'
screams, deepened by his own praying, chanting voice, Mark heard
one sound that reassured him and gave him hope.

It was the rattling of the pebble avalanche that had never really
ceased, but now became more defined. It was a hubbub of wordless
voices and senseless syllables all running together and splitting each
other in fragments, interrupting and fractioning and changing each
other, an undistinguishable medley of sorrow, regret, foreboding,
agony. It persisted in rising and falling waves, then started to build up
and up to a crescendo.

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 317

Mark took his cue: it was the confusion of defeat and rout. He
hurled the words of his power at it all.

"In the name of Jesus! You must depart! Unclean ones! There is no
room for you! No dwelling in this human being. For Jesus has
commanded: Go! And you go! Go! Go!"

Mark remembers clearly stopping at this point. He did some quick
thinking. By now the possessing evil spirit should have been suf-
ficiently weakened and Ponto's grasp on Jamsie sufficiently diluted for
Jamsie to make his fatal and all-important choice.

Mark bent down near Jamsie's ear, speaking in a gentle, firm tone.
He remembers almost word for word; it was the choice that always
came in some way. "Jamsie! Jamsie! Jamsie! Listen to me: Now! You
have to choose! You have to make a choice! Either you take a step in
trust. You renew your faith. Blindly, mind you, blindly. Or now you
yield to Ponto and to all of Ponto's friends. Jamsie! All of them, Jamsie!
In the name of Jesus, choose! Now choose, Jamsie!"

In his turn, Jamsie recalls that at this moment he woke up to the
confusion around him. Gradually, as in a thinning haze, he began to
make out dim figures besides the Shadow behind Mark, and he saw
zigzag gestures, the ceiling and the walls of the room; he felt the
pressure of the straps across his chest, middle, and legs. His mouth was
dry, he remembers, but he was breathing easily.

Farther away from the bed, he could not see anything except as a
fuzzy gray-black background — the closest comparison Jamsie can give
to describe that blurry background is what he saw when he once tried
on the very powerful eyeglasses of a friend who was almost blind.
Everything blurred together and seemed to darken.

Closer, he could see the figures of the assistants as they held their
ears and struggled with that deafening whistling noise. One was
staggering. Two had fallen to the floor. One was standing upright,
moving slowly and agonizingly toward him.

Still nearer to him, he could see two or three single figures, together
with a multitude of shapes and forms. Ponto was there, but some
infinite distance away. Jamsie could not understand this: Ponto was
near, yet far. He seemed to be all squeezed together as if his body was
boneless and someone had caught it in an invisible clothes wringer
narrowing his girth, splaying his limbs, bulging his eyes. And his look
was no longer merely importunate and mischievous. For the first time
it was nasty, Jamsie felt, nasty, bitter, hating, desperate all at once.

3l8 THE CASES

Ponto's agony seemed to be multiplied by a whole river of forms and
shapes — torsos without heads, heads without bodies, arms and legs
without a trunk, fingers without hands, toes without legs, bellies
without a body, genitals floating free, long plaits of gray and yellow
hair — all wreathing and snaking fitfully, aimlessly around Ponto in
zigzag tracery.

Closest to him of all, except for Mark, Jamsie saw the Shadow. It
loomed up above him with a superhuman stature. It was neither black
nor gray nor white but an indefinable amalgam of shifting darkling
shades, much like the smoke from wet coals — never still or calm, but
ruffled and rippling irregularly. Head, shoulders, hands, mouth, eyes,
feet were clear enough to be perceived, but not clear enough to be
described.

Jamsie heard Mark's voice then, gentle, firm, finalizing.

"Jamsie! Now is the time to choose. Remember! I told you. You! You
choose. You have to choose. Of your own free will."

Somehow or other, Mark's voice was reaching Jamsie in spite of the
din and the distracting gyrations and febrile jumping of all those
forms.

"Choose! Choose! Yours is the choice. Now!" Mark's unhesitating
syllables clung to Jamsie's memories.

Jamsie could not see Mark's face as Mark bent down to speak in his
ear, but the Shadow's features were clear. A kaleidoscope of expres-
sions passed over that face. Jamsie began weakly to remember. Where
had he seen this expression? That expression? The next one? The last
one? They all seemed different, yet they all seemed to be the same.

Then Jamsie realized that the various changing expressions were
repeating themselves over and over again, coming and fading and
returning in a carousel set to the din and shouts and screams.

"Choose! Choose!"

It was Mark's voice again. Jamsie turned. He tried to make out
Mark's face. He could not. From forehead to chin Mark seemed to be
faceless. But he still heard Mark's voice.

Then his memory began to clear. The expressions became more
familiar. Yes . . . yes . . . that was his father's, Ara's . . . and
that one Uncle Ponto's . . . the pimp's . . . Jay Beedem's . . . Jay
Beedem's?"

"Choose! Jamsie! Choose!"

Then, interspersed with the changing faces, Jamsie began to see the
other funny-looking faces he had seen in all the years back to his

UNCLE PONTO AND THE MUSHROOM-SOUPER 319

childhood, i960, 1958, 1957, 1949, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1939, 1938, 1937,
1933. And he began to see that his fright for all these years had been a
form of fascination, that even while running away from the "funny-
lookin' faces," he had been inviting them, that he had wanted to be
found by them!

Inside his deepest self another movement started, beyond his
willing. The desire to be rid of that fascination. But there was still the
agonizing fear and doubt. "If I stopped looking at that carousel,"
Jamsie today describes his feelings at that point in the exorcism, "I felt
I would cease to exist. I would die, die, die sort of thing."

Then his fascinated gaze faltered and flicked away from the carousel
of faces for an instant over to Mark's face.

Mark was no longer faceless for Jamsie. He did not have the features
Jamsie knew as Mark's. Still, Jamsie knew, they genuinely belonged to
Mark. Another puzzlement for Jamsie.

He peered at Mark, staring at the eyes and the nose and mouth. The
colors of his face were beginning to glow and shimmer in old gold, in
tarnished silver, faded blue and brown and yellow. Jamsie half-feared
to find some phase of the "funny-lookin' face" on Mark, but there was
none. And he had no fear or fright. Another emotion, other thoughts
were coming to Jamsie.

Mark's voice reached him again. "You must choose, Jamsie."

Jamsie glanced again at the Shadow. In all its bulk and in every
weaving curve of its changing face and figure there was now a certain
cringing. Jamsie read hesitation there, even as he found himself
fascinated always by the changes.

Jamsie began to look back and forth from the Shadow back to Mark,
then at the Shadow, slowly at first, then quickly. And Mark's insistent
"Choose. Make your choice, Jamsie!" came to him again and again.

Suddenly he understood. He was free. No one would force him. No
one could. He was free — to go on immersing himself in the changing
horrors of the Shadow, or to look at Mark and make an opposite
choice.

He started to gaze steadily at Mark; and in that look he knew he was
choosing.

There were no words on his lips. He had no sentence in his brain, no
concepts in his mind about that choice. He was choosing, merely
because he chose to choose; and, choosing thus, he was freely
choosing.

And as the thrust of his choice gathered strength within him, he

320 THE CASES

began to recognize the new lines and shades in Mark's face: all the
traits of goodness and joy and freedom and welcome he had ever
known in others — Lydia and Ara of years ago, Lila Wood, the old icon
at home in New York — all were there as so many frames, as mirrors
reflecting an immense beauty and joy and peace and unshakable
eternity.

Slowly Mark's features became clear, Mark's solid features, tense
and granite-like, his eyes closed, his hand still raised holding the
crucifix. The Shadow was receding like smoke from a cigarette being
dissipated in the air. And with it all the noise and din was fading away
weakly into silence.

Over Mark's face there was a film of fine suffering drawn tight like
gauze. Jamsie was stung with compassion. Mark had said to him: "If
we get rid of the Enemy, Jamsie, I will be the last to feel the lash of his
tail."

Mark had lost sight of Jamsie by then. He was in his own travail, his
own agony, his own payment of pain.

It was the young assistant who described the change in Jamsie.
There was no more hint of struggle. A great calm filled Jamsie's
features. Mark's voice still boomed, even though the noise had died
away. Mark was repeating again the two words: "Jesus! Mercy!"

The young priest knew that Jamsie was free at last. He unbuckled
the straps that held Jamsie down on the cot.

"Mark!" Jamsie shouted to the exorcist as he rose up from the cot.
"Father Mark! I'm free!" Jamsie touched Mark on the arm. "Father
Mark!" He took Mark's hand and felt the icy cold of those fingers. He
stood a few moments waiting.

Then finally Mark lowered the outstretched arm which held the
crucifix. His eyes lost the glassy stare; he blinked and Jamsie saw the
look of recognition returning in Mark's eyes. And Mark saw in Jamsie's
eyes and on his face an expression of peace and lively hope which had
never been there since he had known Jamsie.

The Rooster
and the Tortoise

It was 6:00 a.m. exactly by the clock tower in the Piazza della Liberta
of Udine when the party of eight Americans left the hotel in two
limousines. Everything in their trip had been planned down to the last
detail in timing and ceremonial.

The date was July 23, and already they felt the high summer heat.
Within 15 minutes they had made their way through the narrow
streets past arcades and porticos, out of the city, and were on the
undulating road down through the coastal plain. Now and again, when
they crested a hill, they caught glimpses of the Adriatic Sea as a
glinting blue band on the horizon. To the far north stood the Alps,
white and on guard.

Their destination was the village of Aquileia (population 1,500)
some ten miles south toward the sea. For Carl, the leader of the trip,
this was to be a homecoming: long ago he had lived, suffered, and
triumphed in Aquileia. For Carl's seven companions, it was a
pilgrimage to a venerated shrine.

The two men riding with Carl in the first limousine were his friends
and associates; the woman, Maria, had been his assistant for four years.
The four college students in the second limousine were psychology
majors and Carl's student assistants. Besides being a highlight in their
studies, the trip was a mystical celebration for them.

In the first limousine, Carl led the conversation in jubilant tones:
"We are on the brink of discovering what Christianity was like before
the Greeks and Romans distorted it." He was a thick-set man in his

322 THE CASES

late forties, of medium height, with close-cropped, coal-black, curly
hair and beard; high rounded cheekbones beneath a high forehead,
eyes not merely black, but shining black, like polished agates. He had a
Roman nose, long, straight, with a slight hump in the middle. The lips
were full and sat over a strong jawline. He was tanned and
healthy-looking. He wore a light suit over an open shirt.

As he spoke, he gestured quietly to emphasize his meaning. The ring
on his right index finger flashed in the morning sun. It was a wide gold
band adorned with a gold image of a tortoise. He toyed with the two
emblems of an ancient Roman god, Neptune, a dolphin and a trident,
which hung on his neck chain.

Carl was a qualified psychologist, with a prior degree in physics. His
studies had led him into parapsychology and research concerning the
nonordinary states of human consciousness. Under the impulse of his
personal gifts as a psychic, he had been experimenting in astral travel
and reincarnation.

After 11 years of intensive work, he was going to Aquileia
accompanied by associates and students. For here, as he and the others
had learned a few months previously during one of Carl's trances, he
had lived some 1,600 years previously during a former existence as a
public notary named Petrus. In that trance, which had taken place
under controlled laboratory conditions, Carl accurately described not
merely ancient Aquileia — its amphitheater, forums, public baths,
palaces, quays, cemeteries, triumphal arches, and shops. He had given
a detailed account of how the fourth-century citizens of Aquileia had
reerected a public statue of Neptune which a religious sect had
overturned in the previous century. Some weeks after that seance,
news had come independently from Aquileia telling precisely of such a
statue and of a Latin inscription backing up Carl's statements.

Carl had also given details of a mosaic floor that was part of a
fourth-century Christian chapel. And he added something piquant
which fascinated his associates and students: a description of a very
ancient ritual that used to be performed by Petrus and his companions
at one particular spot on that mosaic floor.

The purpose of their present trip was to reenact that ritual on July
23, the summer festival of the god Neptune.

Now, in the first limousine, Carl was again describing that particular
spot and the ritual. The spot was a mosaic medallion depicting a fight
between a red rooster and a brown tortoise. Apparently Petrus and his

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 323

companions — "Christians of the original kind," Carl commented —
used to come and stand in single file to the right of the medallion.
Then, one by one, they used to step on the Rooster (symbol of the
intellectual pride and imperial power-madness which "had corrupted
genuine and original Christianity"), then kneel, and looking at the
Tortoise (symbol of immortality and eternity), pronounce the Latin
formulae: Ave Dorninus Aquae vivae! Ave Dominus immortalis qui
Christum fecisti et reduxisti! (Hail, Lord of Living Water! Hail, Eternal
Lord who made Christ and took him back.)

It was this corrective religious aspect of Carl's experiments and
researches that had attracted the interest and attention of many — in
particular, of the group accompanying him this morning.

Norman was reared a Lutheran, but in his late teens had rebelled
against the traditionalism and conservative beliefs of his church. He
became convinced that Luther was a wanton rebel and Lutheranism a
mere sixteenth-century invention having very little to do with the
original teaching of Christ and the first Christians.

Albert, Carl's second associate, was a former Episcopal priest. After
three years in the ministry, he took up studies in psychology,
convinced that his church was no longer speaking the language of
modern people and no longer delivering the original message of
salvation Christ had preached.

Of the four psychology majors, the group riding in the second
limousine, two were Catholic — Donna and Keith; one, Bill, was
Jewish. Charlie had been baptized in the Presbyterian Church, but
had converted to Judaism two years previously. All four had been
educated in the prevalent idea of their time that Western Christianity
was a product of Greek philosophy and Roman legalism and organiza-
tion, and the churches were shams and false representatives of the
genuine church of Jesus.

The group's plan for this morning was quite simple. Without any
fanfare or fuss, they intended to stand around Carl while he reenacted
that ancient ritual over that particular medallion in the ancient floor of
the cathedral. They had a tape recorder and movie camera. All Carl's
words and gestures were to be recorded on tape and film. Norman, a
close and longtime associate of Carl and a fellow psychologist, was to
act as monitor: at each stage he would announce into the recorder
what was happening during the visit, even as it was being filmed. They
half-expected Carl to be able to uncover further evidence of Petrus
and his ancient fellow believers. As psychologists, Carl and his

324 THE CASES

companions hoped to obtain some new insights into the parapsycholo-

gical from the experience.

Four and a half miles south of the Venice-Trieste freeway, they
entered Aquileia. Everything was drenched in blinding sunlight. All
colors were fused into the brightness of the day. Circumstances were
favorable for Carl that morning in Aquileia. All trace of modern life
and activity was dormant. On that summer festival of Neptune, the
god of the sea, as they made their way slowly toward the cathedral, all
living humans were asleep and hidden, as if Neptune had spread his
net over them. Even the dogs and chickens were still asleep. A solitary
cat licked and preened itself on a rooftop in the shadow of a chimney.

Maria touched Carl's hand, smiling. He responded to her expression
of satisfaction with a quick smile, but he said nothing. They were all
gazing out at the village streets as they rode toward the square.
Houses, taverns, shops became indistinct shapes in the haze of heat
and light. For those with eyes to see, this twentieth-century time
frame was now transparent. In the boiling quiet they sensed the
presence of ancient gods, of lisping shades, and of all those who once
walked there in their pride, their sorrow, their loves, and their defeats.

The village was almost incongruously dominated by the huge
cathedral and its spired campanile. Aquileia, a 2,000-year-old city, was
once the fourth most important Roman city in the world, after Rome
itself and Capua and Milan.

Then joined to the Adriatic by six canals, it was the only city outside
Rome empowered to strike its own coins. The capital of a strategically
and economically vital province, it was famous for its theater and its
religious festivals, its celebration of mysteries, and its curative waters.
It was the meeting place of Roman emperors, popes, synods; residence
of its own patriarch; prized by German and Austrian kings; fought for
by Slovenes, Huns, Avars, Greeks, Franks, English, Danes.

Now Aquileia is an obscure little farming community off the beaten
track, a forgotten and inconsequential village not shown on general
maps, and described by sardonic clerics in Rome as "a cathedral with
some streets attached to it."

Carl's party drove directly to the cathedral; they had made
arrangements with the guardian. As they got to the door, the student
assistants began the "experiment." Donna started the movie camera,
and Bill started the tape recorder. All was set. Every one of them was
tense and expectant. A certain air of happy quest descended on them.

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 325

Their course now was to enter the cathedral, walk down its central
nave, turn right at the sanctuary, and descend into the ruins of the
fourth-century chapel.

Carl's behavior changed the moment he stepped out of the
limousine. He was no longer smiling and relaxed. He had that "look"
his associates had come to know so well — his eyes heavy-lidded and
almost closed, the head lifted, hands hanging by his sides, and on his
face a special glow of absorption and reverence they had come to
associate with his "trances." There were hints of ecstasy and happiness
at the corners of his mouth. The utter calm of rapture seemed to
descend on him: his forehead and cheeks were utterly smooth, free of
wrinkles and lines, as if the skin were suddenly made young again or
drawn tight by an invisible hand.

But the general expression of his whole face was abstracted and
bloodless. There was no hint of a personal expression, no indication of
a word about to be pronounced or of a passion about to erupt, neither
confidence nor fear, neither welcome nor hope of welcome, neither
compassion nor expectation of compassion.

And around the eyes, in a way none of his associates and students
could ever explain, there was what they had come to call the
"twist" — some crookedness, some wry misshapenness, as if the natural
contours of skull, forehead, eyes, and ears had been splayed out of
kilter by some superhuman force residing in him temporarily with
tremendous and awe-full power. It was ungainly and uncomely but
accepted by those around him as inevitable, Carl always referred to it
as "my divine suffering." For his theory — or rather his belief — was
that during psychic trances a human being with an "open soul," as he
used to phrase it, was "taken over," was "possessed" by the
superhuman. The merely physical frame of that human being was
overwhelmed — suffered, in that sense — by the inrush of silent divinity.
The thin wall of reality separating the divine and the human was
temporarily breached, and the human was "marinated" in the divine.

Now all waited. Carl had to move and talk. There must be no
outside interruption, no external stimulus. The minutes ticked by.
They still had not moved from the entrance. Carl's lips moved, but
there was no audible sound. Then he shifted his stance, turning slowly
in a half-circle, first toward the sea six miles away, then in the
direction of Venice in a southwesterly direction. As he turned, he had
a questioning expression on his face. He seemed to be waiting.

3^6 THE CASES

Thev heard scraps of words and sentences: ". . . the fourth canal
. . . Via Postumia . . . must have the integral number of . . ."

But his voice sank to a whisper and died away completely by the
time he was facing in the direction of Venice. On his face, there was
now a look of thunder and bitterness. His lips were working furiously
as if in heated argument or commentary. But they heard nothing.
Again he turned around, to face the cathedral door.

"Now 0800," recorded Norman. "Carl is moving into the cathedral.
His right hand is raised in salute, palm turned outward."

Carl's face was calm again. His lips had ceased to move. They
entered a great golden-brown sea of silence, sunlight, and color arched
over by the stone ribs of a roof that curved and soared away out of
sight.

Then Carl headed straight down the 110-foot nave. Sixty-five feet
wide, the floor was one whole ocean of mosaics flanked by solid
columns on either side; it ended in a semidomed apse where the high
altar stood. The sun's rays were pouring in through the nave windows
and slanting down upon the expanse with dovetailing shafts of light
and shadow. Dust shimmered in paths of light, flecking the air with
colors of the mosaics and the surrounding walls, red, yellow, ochre,
purple, orange, green.

For three-quarters of the nave the little group walked solemnly and
steadily over that magic flooring teeming with designs of garlands,
birds, animals, fish, ancient Romans, all glowing with deep tints and
sophisticated forms.

Carl made only one detour: when he reached a particular medallion
set in the floor, he paused. His lips were moving again: ". . . weak-
ness ... to prefer death to strength . . . prostituting humility of this
weak ..." Then in staccato repetition under his breath he uttered
the old Roman words for Rome's cruel strength: "Virtus, virtus, virtus,
virtus ..."

Norman glanced at the medallion. "Carl is circling this mosaic of the
Good Shepherd," he recorded.

Carl's own voice tapered off with whispered tones of disgust:
"... braying donkey . . . Alexander's god ... a braying
donkey . . ."

After this, Carl walked on calmly until he reached a broad mosaic
band bevond which they saw a composite picture of the sea. The
ancient artists had depicted boats, fishermen, fish of all sizes, sea

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 327

serpents, dolphins, and a recurrent theme: Jonah, the Old Testament
figure, in the mouth of a whale.

Carl's behavior became erratic at this point, and his face again
mirrored anger together with confusion and contempt. He drew back
with a low hiss of breath, his body almost crouching. Then he bobbed
his head from side to side, as if seeking an exit between dangerous
thorns.

Norman recorded, his voice stumbling as he followed Carl's
changing course. "Carl is moving to the left. Slowly . . . now to the
center, now to the right — no, he is moving leftwards again, stepping
on a Jonah medallion." Then in an aside to Donna, who was still
filming all of Carl's movements, "Move over in front of him, Donna,
move up front, please." Donna did so.

Painfully, with sudden stops and cautious steps, Carl made his way
up to the steps of the sanctuary. As Donna directed the camera at him,
his eyes were wide open and blazing with an anger Donna had never
seen in them. "Carl is turning back," Norman continued to record.
"He is going toward the tunnel door." This tunnel led down to the
fourth-century chapel over which the present cathedral was built in
the eleventh century.

Donna was the first to reach the rectangular floor of the ancient
chapel. She photographed the arrival of Carl, Norman, and the others.
Carl now walked unerringly forward, but bowed his head several times
as if acknowledging presences the others could not perceive.

The floor was another elaborate mass of Roman mosaics — pheasants,
donkeys, fruits, pastoral figures and scenes, flowers. Carl did not stop
until he reached a wide band of orange marble which ran the width of
the chapel.

"Carl is standing at the orange band," Norman continued his
recording. "Beyond it are many geometric designs."

After about 30 seconds, Carl's behavior changed. His face lit up. His
head was lifted high. Both hands were outstretched. He stepped across
the orange band and walked straight to a medallion lying just beyond
the geometric designs. This was the spot where the ancient ritual was
to be enacted. The medallion showed the Tortoise glaring up at the
Rooster.

Carl's companions gathered around the medallion. Donna stood
opposite Carl, the camera directed straight at him. "Carl's hands are
joined, palm on palm, at his chest," Norman whispered into the
microphone. "His eyes are closed. This is it."

3^8 THE CASES

No sooner had Norman said this than Carl opened his arms to full
length on either side of him; he raised his head until his eyes were
directed upward behind closed lids. His companions began to hear half
words and syllables of that ancient incantation he had come to recite:
"... aquae viv . . . immortalis . . ."But he seemed to gag or stutter
when he reached the word "Christum. " He never fully pronounced it.
It came out as "Christ . . . Christ . . . Christ . . ." (rhyming with
"grist"). And as he stuttered over that first syllable, his voice got
louder and louder, and his breathing became faster and more labored.

"Here, Bill, take the mike," Norman safd quickly, "but hold it so
that we can still catch my comments and his words." He had been
instructed by Carl that, if there were any unforeseen block or
difficulty, he was to take Carl lightly by the hand and guide him in on
top of the Rooster.

Carl was still stuttering: "Christ . . . Christ . . . Christ ..."
Donna at her camera noticed the white foam gathering at the corners
of his mouth. Norman reached out to take Carl's right hand in his.
"God!" he exclaimed in a loud whisper, "his hand is like ice."

Carl was now struggling. He had ceased speaking. He was like a
man trying to forge ahead and walk against a strong, buffeting wind.
His hand trembled in Norman's, and his whole body vibrated in his
effort to push onward, to step on to that Rooster in the mosaic
medallion. His lips were drawn back over his teeth in the effort. The
skin on his face tightened and whitened; and although he no longer
spoke, there started in him a low moan like a man expelling his breath
in a vast, heaving attempt to push past an obstacle.

Norman felt the icy cold entering his own fingers and hand,
deadening all feeling there, loosening his grip on Carl.

The moaning rose in volume, changing to a growling, then increased
in volume again until it resembled the shouting of a man through
clenched teeth. Norman had let go of Carl's hand by now and was
standing back, confused and dazed. The others had drawn back a few
steps in apprehension at this unexpected turn of events. Carl was now
alone, still facing Donna across that medallion.

At the height of that peculiar muffled shout from Carl, a change
seemed to come over him; and the shock was too much for Donna.
Suddenly, it seemed, what had been buffeting Carl closed in around
him like an invisible cocoon. Some unseen bonds and wrappings
tightened around his entire body, squeezing and narrowing him,
binding him in a crunched fashion and bending him down lower and

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 329

lower to the ground. He seemed to diminish in size. The expression of
effort and straining rage on his face was replaced by a look of crushed,
broken helplessness, almost of infantility. It was the look of one trying
to draw into the smallest possible diameter of his own body.

Donna still held the camera in operation, but she whispered in
panic: "Somebody help me! Please! Quick!" Nobody budged; they
could not take their eyes off Carl. He was whining in an up-and-down
fashion, as if pain and struggle had emptied him. It was a protest
against agony. All this became too much for Donna. The camera slid
from her fingers to the floor. And the last shot taken of Carl shows him
bending forward, his hands locked tightly across his chest, his head
twisted to one side, eyes closed, his tongue between his teeth, and an
expression of resignation, defeat, and repose on his face — the same
that many have seen on those who have been garroted or drowned. It
was an emptied-out look.

The clattering fall of Donna's camera broke the frozen fascination of
the others. Bill and two students finally rushed to help Donna. Norman
and the others lifted Carl up. As they did, his body relaxed from its
rigid posture and he was carried limp and unconscious out into the
open air.

All were perspiring and shaken. Carl's body was cold. They poured
some drops of whisky between his lips, and he began to recover. After
a while, he breathed normally and opened his eyes.

"Carl," Norman spoke quietly, "Carl, it will be better if we go on to
Venice now."

A little over a week later, back in New York, Carl was far from all
right. Even after a few days rest in Venice and Milan, and the long
flight home, Carl was still in a dazed condition that none of his
associates could understand. He was no longer the commanding,
self-possessed, and self-confident leader he had been. He ate and slept
fitfully, talked very little, canceled all his scheduled appointments.

Carl seemed to be reliving again and again the scene in Aquileia,
always in the same way: he muttered and talked, sometimes strode
around the house and garden reenacting each step of that disastrous
morning. And always, at the crucial moment, he went into the same
queer seizure. It was Donna who remarked one day that he seemed to
her to be trying to carry the Aquileia incident past that difficult
moment at the medallion.

330 THE CASES

Finally Norman and Albert called Carl's father in Philadelphia. Carl
was taken home. A long rest was prescribed by the family doctor.

There was no suspicion in anyone's mind that Carl was possessed or
in the process of possession, until one night when only Carl and his
father were sleeping alone in the big house. His father was suddenly
wakened from sleep. Carl stood by his bedside, crying quietly. He
spoke very clearly, although not all he said seemed coherent to his
father. He evidently wanted help from a priest. He named him: Father
Hartney F., who lived in Newark, New Jersey. And Carl wanted his
father to call the priest then and there. It was after midnight, but
his father was sufficiently alarmed to call the priest. Father was out, his
housekeeper said; she would give the message to him when he
returned.

Carl's father had just hung up when there occurred one of many
peculiar apparent coincidences that marked the case of Carl V. The
telephone rang. The man's voice at the other end was level and
pleasant. He announced himself as Father F. Yes, he would like to see
Carl; that was why he was calling. No, he was not in New Jersey; he
was in Philadelphia. No, he had not been contacted by his house-
keeper.

"Mr. V., I must ask you to trust me as a man and as a priest. I have
something to say to your son which is for his ears only." His father
looked at Carl, then handed him the telephone. Carl appeared to
listen, tears flowing, his face drawn. All he said was "Yes" a few times;
then a slow "Tomorrow. All right." He hung up and, without looking
at his father, turned slowly away and left the room.

Carl spent three weeks in New York with Father F., for a first round
of pre-exorcism tests. He was back home by late August. During
September and October he commuted frequently from Philadelphia to
Newark and New York. At the beginning of November the exorcism
began.

CARL V.

Although there are many in the field of parapsychology who deplore
the disappearance of Carl V. from their midst, very few are acquainted
with the circumstances in which he finally renounced all research and
study of this very modern branch of knowledge. Carl was already a

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 33 1

brilliant psychologist when he turned to parapsychology. Many who
knew him and his gifts predicted that he was the right man in the right
place at the right time doing exactlv what needed to be done. They
could see the premature termination of Carl's career, therefore, only
as unfortunate, a loss to the cause of true humanism.

Carl was not only very intelligent. He apparently possessed to an
eminent degree some psychic gifts that are highly valued nowadays
and the object of much research, such powers as telepathy and
telekinesis. He found, in addition, a suitable academic location where
he could exercise and study those gifts. Within that ambient he was
surrounded by men and women of talent, students of ability and
acumen. And, to cap his potential, there were two or three major
events in his personal life that placed him in a category all by himself.

There was first a vision he had had as a teenager. There was, too,
unexpected support of his general ideas about parapsychology from an
unusually reputable quarter with the appearance of Aldous Huxley's
book The Doors of Perception in 1954. In addition, Carl himself
enjoyed altered states of consciousness at various levels for almost ten
years (1962-72). As early as J 965 he began to have constant
perceptions of the "aura" surrounding objects—the "non-thing aura,"
as he called it. Finally he achieved his first "exaltation" (his own term)
in 1969.

In retrospect, Carl himself now assumes that, while his "exaltation"
had a definite psychic character, at its core it was the threshold of
diabolic possession.

But in the meanwhile, what gave a particular cachet to Carl's career
was the scrutiny of admiring colleagues who were applying their
scientific principles precisely to such phenomena as altered states of
consciousness, visions, astral travel, telepathy, telekinesis, reincarna-
tion.

What added a new dimension in Carl's case and in his own work
was the authentically religious bent of his mind. Carl V. did, indeed,
set out to find the truth about religion, Christianity, in particular. And
the combination of psychic gifts, the extraordinary progress of what
seemed to be his personal powers, and his religious leanings all gave
him a peculiarly commanding appeal in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
For in the decadence of organized and institutional religion people
had begun to switch their active interest to parapsychology as a
possible source of religious knowledge and even of wisdom.

Indeed, as far as human judgment can go, we can only surmise that

332 THE CASES

Carl should have achieved much in his chosen field if his life had not
been upset hv diabolic possession and the consequent exorcism.

There was little that distinguished Carl either from his two brothers
or from his school companions during his early childhood. His family
had plentv of monev and enjoyed considerable influence in their
hometown of Philadelphia. The family was Mainline Protestant and
worshiped at the Episcopal church. Carl's gro wing-up was not
particularly difficult. No misfortunes or tragedies hit the family.
Neither the Depression nor World War II affected it very adversely.
Carl did well in school and at sports. He traveled a good deal with his
family, visiting Europe, South America, and Hawaii at various times.

The first manifestations of any extraordinary psychic gifts came
slowly, and only gradually did his parents realize that Carl had
capacities beyond the ordinary. When Carl was between seven and
eight, they began to notice that when, for instance, his father or
mother were looking for something — a newspaper, a pen, a glass of
water — more often than not Carl would appear almost immediately
carrying what they needed.

They put this down to coincidence at first. But then it became so
frequent and, at times, so eerie that they set out to determine whether
it was merely coincidence. After some weeks of close and discreet
observation, they concluded that Carl did know in some way or other
what they were thinking at times.

They might have brushed even this aside if they had not one day
overheard his brothers asking Carl to bend some nails. Obligingly Carl
bent and twisted two one-inch nails by "feeling'' them with his index
finger and thumb.

Carl's father consulted a psychologist. A long series of discussions
followed. Carl was brought by his parents to that psychologist, to
another psychologist, and to a psychiatrist. The unanimous decision,
after some testing, was that the child had incipient psychic gifts of
telepathy and telekinesis. They maintained that he should not be made
to feel out of the ordinary. His parents should endeavor to get him to
recognize his gifts as nonordinary and to restrict their usage.

The difficulty with all this decision making behind Carl's back
totally escaped Carl's parents and even the psychologists. For, without
realizing fully its implications, Carl knew what they all thought and
knew their decision. In a subtle recess of his child's mind he decided to

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 333

go along with the entire plan. But from that day on there began in him
that "aloneness" that marked him in later life.

Carl obeyed his father's suggestion that he bend no more nails, that
he no longer tell people what they were thinking, and that he take no
more initiative due to any telepathie knowledge he had of their wishes.
Bv his eleventh year, as far as his parents eonld see, all manifestation
of psyehie powers seemed to have eeased in his external life.

But, in reality, Carl had now got a command over these powers in
himself that no one realized and that he guarded almost as a jealous
and lonely secret. Only occasionally did he slip. In a fit of temper he
might smash a cup in another room or shout at a companion some
boyish insult to match the insult the boy was about to launch.

In spite of this continued connivance on his part, Carls excellent
relationships with his father and mother were genuine. In later years,
after his parents divorced, Carl remained closest to his father.

As the eldest child, Carl was looked upon by his two brothers,
Joseph and Ray, with something approaching awe. The three of them
had an intimacy and openness with each other that lasted beyond
childhood. It was within that framework of boyhood intimacy that he
told Joseph and Ray of his vision at the age of sixteen.

From their accounts and Carl's recollections, it appears that the
vision took place in his father's librarv one evening as Carl was
preparing his homework. He glanced at the clock. Dinner was served
punctually at six o'clock each evening. He had, he saw, one minute to
go, just enough time to find a particular volume of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and open it to the article he needed for his written
composition.

After he found the information he was looking for, his consciousness
underwent a peculiar change. He was not frightened; instead, the
change put him in what he describes as a great hush. He no longer saw
the book in his hand or the shelves of books in front of him. He no
longer even felt the weight of the volume in his hand. He did not feel
the floor beneath his feet. But he did not miss them. They seemed no
longer necessary.

He did not perceive all this directly. Only on the periphery of his
consciousness was he aware of perceptual changes and of his lack of
any need for physical feeling of his surroundings. His attention was
riveted on something else, something totally different from, but in a
mysterious way intimate to, all his experience up to that moment of his
life.

334 THE cases

It was, first of all, an atmosphere. There was much light, but, he
says, a dark light. Yet, that darkness was so brilliant that no detail
escaped him. He was not looking at something or at a landscape; he
was participating in it, so clear was every detail shown and conveyed
to him. What he saw was dimensionless: no "over there," no ''up" or
"down" or "large" or "small." Yet it was a place. Objects were in that
place, but the place was nowhere. And the objects located in that
space were not found by coordinates, or seen by the eye, or felt by the
hand. He knew them, as it were, by participation in their being. He
knew them completely. Therefore, he knew what they were and where
they were. And even though they had a relationship to him and to
each other, it was not a relationship of space and distance and
comparative sizes.

Not only was normal spatial dimension in abeyance as nonextended
time. It was not that time seemed to be suspended. There was no time,
no duration. He was not looking at the objects for a long or a short
time — it could not have been seconds. Neither could it have been an
infinity of hours or years. There was no sense of duration. It was
timeless. Yet he did clearly, if indirectly, perceive a time. But it was,
again, an internal time and seemed to be the total existence of himself
and of all those objects without perceptible or receding beginning, and
without an ending or an approaching ending.

As for a description of that landscape and the objects "in" it, Carl
could only speak vaguely. It was a "land," he said, a "countryside," a
"region." It had all you would expect — mountains, sky, fields, crops,
trees, rivers. But these lacked what Carl called the "obscurity" of their
counterparts in the physical world. And, athough it had no apparent
houses or cities, it was "inhabited": it was full of an "inhabiting
presence." There was no sound or echo, but the soundlessness was not
a silence, and the echolessness was not an' absence of movement. It
seemed to Carl for the first time he was freed from the oppression of
silence and rid of the nostalgia produced in him by echoes.

As he took all this in, or as he was embraced by all this — he could
never distinguish exactly which was a truer way of speaking — there
was in him a sudden desire. That desire had a purity and a sacred
immunity that freed it of any aching and did not imply a want in a way
we normally understand. It was a summary appeal, but without
request. It was desire as its own confirmation. It was substantial hope
as its own trust. Yet it was desire. He would describe it at times as a
"Show me!" or a "Give me!" or a "Take me!" or a "Lead me!" arising

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 335

in him. But, he said, none of these expressed the bones and marrow of
that desire. And over all his desire and desiring self there was an
all-satisfying acceptance and acceptability.

Then the whole focus of his vision changed. It was the highlight of
his real wonder. He was listening to a small voice and seeing a face he
cannot describe. He heard words and saw expressions he cannot put
into language. The dominant trait of the voice and face was expressed
by him later in the word "Wait!" He did not know what that "Wait!"
meant or what he was to wait for. But the whole idea was intensely
and deeply satisfying.

Carl does not know if the vision would have "lasted" and carried
him farther or not, for he was suddenly jerked out of it. "You've
exactly one minute to finish." It was little Ray. "Hurry up!"

An immense sadness welled up in Carl at that moment, an
indescribable sense of loss. He saw the cold books, the long, hard
shelves, and his little brother's face. He felt the volume in his hands
and the floor beneath his feet. He glanced at the clock. It was one
minute to six o'clock.

As he hurried to his table, he had tears in his eyes. But, afterward,
he could not make out whether they were tears of pain or thankful-
ness. He never knew.

Before going to bed, he confided in Joseph and Ray. "Perhaps it was
Grandma telling you something," Ray suggested helpfully. Their
grandmother had died the previous year. "No," said Joseph, "it was
from God. They told us in Sunday school that God sends these things
to show you what's going to happen."

Carl often wondered subsequently about this unique event in his
life. What was he to wait for? Who or what had been talking to him?
What had he been so desirous of at that moment? But, in spite of these
questionings, the vision remained in his memory with a sweetness that
nothing could dispel. And it made one subtle difference in him which
many noticed but few understood. In his own mind it separated him
from all others. He was never quite "with" others, never fully together
with them. At parties, dinners, meetings, lectures, he would see
himself essentially separate from the others and on the sidelines.

He was, indeed, waiting. Only years later did he know what it was
he had been told in the vision to expect.

Carl entered Princeton in 1942, got his master's degree in psychol-
ogy in 1947, his doctorate in 1951, spent six more years studying and

33^ THE CASES

doing research. Four of those years saw him in the United States and
two in Europe. He returned only in 1957, to take up a permanent
teaching post on a Midwest university campus. In those 15 years, from
1942 to 1957, some major changes took place in him.

The first and probably one of the most important was due to the
influence of a fellow student, a Tibetan, Olde by name, whom Carl
met in 1953. Olde gave Carl a firsthand introduction to "higher
prayer," as Olde called it.

Olde had been born in Tibet, reared there until the age of ten, then
educated in Switzerland and Germany, and had come to the United
States for doctoral studies. He claimed to be a member of an ancient
Tibetan religious order, The Gelugpa ("The Virtuous"), and that he
himself, as his father before him, was one of the sprulsku or
reincarnating lamas.

Olde's first personal conversation with Carl took place when Carl
happened to hear Olde reading a precis of the thesis he was writing.
The subject was the relationship between Yamantaka, the god of
wisdom, and Yama, the god of Hell Carl asked in all innocence why
statues of Yamantaka always showed the god with 34 arms and 9
heads. Olde's answer, a seeming nonsequitur, struck a strange echo in
Carl. It was one answer Carl never forgot;

"The more arms and the more heads Yamantaka is seen with, the
more you can see the other. And only the other is real."

The other? The other? The other? Didn't he know the other? What
or who was the other?

Carl looked at Olde. And he understood quietly without effort: each
extra arm, each extra head was meant to make nonsense, literally, of
an arm and a head as a real thing. Any thing, an arm, a head, a chair, a
leaf, any thing in itself was unimportant, was significant and real only
because of an other, the other. Thingness was in itself a negation. It
was the non-thing that mattered, because only the non-thing was real.
And he seemed to see also that this was why, ever since his vision, he
had had a tendency to withdraw, to remain on the sidelines, away
from involvement with things, removed from being wholly occupied
with their thingness.

In a gentle dawning within him Carl felt a surge of the same sadness
that had gripped him when little Ray had burst in on him years before
and his vision had been rudely terminated. "It [that moment with
Olde] was the most maturing moment of my life up to that point,"
Carl muses in retrospect today. For, during it, he felt again not only

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 337

that sadness, but his ancient boyhood desire, felt all the pains of
nostalgia as a most acceptable suffering, and at the same time heard
again down the corridors of his memory that still, calm, reassuring
"Wait" replete with its promise and guarantee of fulfillment.

Carl and Olde saw much of each other. And before long Olde was
initiating Carl into "higher prayer." From his own family life and
Sunday schooling, Carl had learned the ordinary modes of prayer. It
consisted of set prayers, hymns, and the occasional spontaneous
self-expression used during grace at meals or when he prayed in
private.

Olde overturned all Carl's ideas and habits. Words, he said, and,
even more importantly, concepts impede "higher prayer" and all true
communication with what Carl as a Christian called "God" and what
Olde called the "All." Carl, he said, would have to train himself for
"higher prayer."

Day after day, Carl sat beside Olde, while Olde trained him in the
basic attitudes of body and "tones" of mind. The conditions of body
were simple to grasp. Quietness (early morning before sunrise or late
at night when no sound disturbed the campus), elimination of any
distraction — a comfortable sitting position, loose clothes on his body,
as little light as possible. But all this and the steps still to come were
merely preparatory and temporary. Olde explained that, if Carl
progressed, he would leap definitively over all physical difficulties to
"higher prayer." And he would be able to "pray" while surrounded by
20 jackhammers pounding away in the middle of a bronze-walled
room. (This was Olde's image.)

Carl quickly attained the required physical quietude and concentra-
tion. The next steps took time — and they ushered Carl to the threshold
of parapsychology. As Olde explained it, Carl had to be clear and
clean of any "thingness." It was easy for Carl to understand how to
void his imagination of images, how to close off his memory so that no
memory images passed in front of his mind, and how to eliminate even
the most peripheral image consciousness of his body position, of the
clothes on his body, of the warmth or the cold of the atmosphere
around him, of his own breathing. But for quite a while he balked at
the ultimate step. Olde instructed him that at this point he might go
around in circles forever and never get any farther at all. Most people,
in fact, did just that.

The ultimate step was to eliminate his own conscious realization
of — therefore his concepts and images of and feelings about — his very

338 THE CASES

condition at that moment of prayer. For a long time he had no control
over his mind to keep himself from realizing he was emptying his
mind; and he had no control over his will, with which he kept desiring
to empty his mind. It all seemed a vicious circle. You disciplined your
mind to think no thoughts, your imagination to indulge in no images,
your feelings not to feel. And you did this by your will. But then, it
appeared to Carl, his mind was full of the idea "I must have no
thoughts." His imagination kept seeking images of itself without
images. His feelings kept feeling that they had no feelings. Around and
around he used to gyrate until he emerged tired and strained and
disappointed.

"Don't give up," Olde consoled him. He told him it could be worse
and that he was sure Carl would one day find the secret — a mere, a
tiny, an almost unnoticeable adjustment. "When you make it, you will
know." He repeated these same words again and again to Carl.

But for quite a while Carl made the summary mistake of trying to
make the "adjustment." He did not and could not know that, if you
made that peculiar "adjustment," you simply made it. Not with your
mind, not with your will, not with your imagination or memory, but
you as a thinking, willing, imagining, remembering self. All your
thingness suddenly of itself became a transparency through which the
non-thing, the other, clearly appeared. And once through that stage,
you entered a shadowless, formless, thingless region of existence where
only reality reigned, and your unreality, your thingness had no vogue,
no role, except as the counterpart of allness.

The moment Carl achieved that condition of "higher prayer," Olde
abruptly terminated their association. "Now, when you want to pray,
really to pray," Olde concluded his instructions, "you know how to do
so."

It was Carl's last year at Princeton as a doctoral student. He had
more leisurely years of study and research in front of him before he
took up a university career. He was avid to go on under Olde's
direction; and as Olde was staying on as lecturer and researcher at the
university, Carl could see no problem.

But Olde would have no more of him. Why? This was Carl's
question to Olde as they walked over the campus in the early
mornings. Why?

Olde would say very little. He had, he admitted, introduced Carl to
the Vajnayana, "the thunderbolt," the vehicle of mystic power. But no
persuasion on earth would get him to channel Carl further in

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 339

Mantra y ana, the vehicle of mystic spells. "What I have done is
enough," Olde grunted. Then as an afterthought: "What I have done
is dangerous enough."

Carl still could not understand. He persisted, asking Olde to explain
or, if he could not explain, at least to suggest a direction for hirn.

Finally one day Olde seemed to have no more answers. Every soul,
he said, which turns to the perfection of Allness is like a closed-
petaled lotus flower in the beginning of its search. Under the direction
of a master or guide, it opens its eight petals slowly. The master merely
assists at this opening. When the petals are open, the tiny silver urn of
true knowledge is placed in the center of the lotus flower. And when
the petals close in again, the whole flower has become a vehicle of that
true knowledge.

Looking away from Carl, Olde said gratingly, almost inimically:
"The silver urn can never be placed at the center of your flower. The
center is already taken by a self-multiplying negation." A pause.
"Filth. Materiality. Slime. Death."

Carl was stunned, literally struck dumb for an instant. Olde walked
away from him, still without looking at him. He was about five paces
away when Carl broke down. He could only manage a choking
exclamation: "Olde! My friend! Olde!"

Olde stopped, his back to Carl. He was utterly calm, motionless,
wordless. Then Carl heard him say in a low voice and not particularly
to him: "Friend is holy." Carl did not understand what he meant.

Then Olde turned slowly around. Carl hardly recognized Olde's
features. They were no longer the soft traits of his friend. Olde's
forehead was no longer a furrowless expanse as before, and his eyes
were blazing with a yellowish light. Harsh lines crisscrossed his mouth
and cheeks. He was not angry. He was hostile. That picture of Olde
was burned into Carl's memory. Olde said only this to Carl, words
Carl could never forget: "You have Yama without Yamantaka. Black
without white. Nothingness without something." It was the last time
he ever spoke directly to Carl.

As Olde turned away again, Carl had a sudden reversal. He seemed
for a few instants to be absorbed in "higher prayer." His surge of
frustration and anger gave away to contempt and disgust for Olde.
Then as he looked at Olde's retreating back, he was filled with a
warning fear of Olde and what Olde stood for. Somehow Olde was the
enemy. Somehow he, Carl, made up a "we" and "us" with someone
else, and Olde could not belong to it.

34^ THE CASES

"Enemy!" he suddenly heard himself shouting alter Olde.

Olde stopped, half-turned, and peered over his shoulder at Carl. His
face was back to its usual repose. His forehead, cheeks, and mouth
were unruffled and smooth. His eyes were calm, wide open, just gentle
deeps of impenetrable light, as they usually were. The compassion in
them hit Carl like a whip. He did not want anybody's compassion. He
took a step back, wanted to speak, but could not get any word out of
his throat. He backed away another step, half-turning away, then
another step and another half-turn, until he literally found himself
moving away. He told himself he had walked away, but deep in
himself he knew he had been repelled, had been turned around and
propelled away.

Apparently Olde too had his own protectors.

His association with Olde had important effects on Carl. Given his
psychic gifts, it was almost inevitable that Olde's introduction to
Eastern mysticism, with its emphasis on the parapsychological, would
impel Carl down a road of research in the then relatively fresh field of
parapsychology and the paranormal elements of human consciousness.

Over and above all else, Carl's time with Olde had sharpened his
extrasensory ability to perceive other people's thoughts. Before his
instructions from Olde, Carl did not always know each and every
thought of those around. More generally, he knew very accurately
their state of mind — worry, happiness, fear, love, hate, and so on; and,
on occasion, he knew precisely what they were thinking. Olde's
discipline had brought that more precise part of Carl's extrasensory
perception into greater use and control. He found it working more
frequently with everybody. And soon he was exercising it at will.

After his "training" with Olde, there were apparently only two
people during Carl's university career who remained peculiarly
"opaque" for him. He could never read their thoughts, and he rarely
knew their inner condition. The first was a onetime girlfriend, Wanola
F. The second was Father Hartney F. ("Hearty"), a priest who was
sent by his bishop to study parapsychology.

In 1954, one year after his break with Olde, Carl met Wanola P., a
graduate student in psychology. A tall, blonde, attractive Midwestern
girl, Wanola was a good sportswoman, socially quite popular. Curi-
ously, it was none of these things that attracted Carl, but rather a
mixture of her unusual intelligence, her point of view regarding his
work on religion and the psyche, and, most of all perhaps, his own

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 34I

inability to get any clear extrasensory perception of what she thought
or felt.

As they began to date, Wanola got to know something of Carl's
psychic gifts. She was fascinated by them, by his novel concepts, and
his brilliant attack on various puzzles and problems of psychology. But
as she got to know him, her fascination turned to compassion, and then
to a fear for Carl's own sanity and for his religious beliefs. It was like a
curious echo of Olde's reaction a year before, but it all went much
more swiftly this time. And his rather brief association with Wanola
left Carl puzzled.

At times, Wanola spoke to Carl at length about some seemingly
offhand remarks he made about "finding" Christianity in its "true" or
"original" state. She remarked on his growing opinion of Jesus as a
simple Calilean fisherman who had been powerfully changed by Cod
and by his taking over of God's spirit. But mainly she grew to be
disturbed by Carl's ambition to subject the very spirit of religion to
controlled laboratory experiment.

Finally one day, just back from a short vacation home to the
Midwest, Wanola came to Carl's room straight from the airport. She
had a simple bouquet of wild flowers she had picked herself before
catching her plane. Curiously, Carl remembers those flowers in every
detail, although he says that at the very moment Wanola entered his
room and started to talk with him, his interest and attention were
elsewhere. He does remember blue gentians, dogtooth violets, little-
boys' breeches, starflowers, and Queen Anne's lace.

But when Wanola walked in with them, Carl did not give her even a
smile or a hello. He was brandishing a small book just published: The
Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley. She remembers him blurting
out the title. Then: "Huxley knows all about it! Mescalin! And I don't
need mescalin!"

Wanola listened to his long sermon on Huxley; and when she left,
she took the bouquet of flowers with her.

Carl had made a delicate choice; he had taken a step away from
simple human tenderness. This he understood only after the exorcism.
Wanola had understood at that moment. He called her from time to
time after that day, but to his confusion she never would see him
again.

Carl's excitement over Huxley's book was enormous. He grasped
immediately the central point advanced by Huxley: that the mind and

34^ THE CASES

psyche are capable of a knowledge and a breadth of experience of
which men in our civilization have rarely dreamed. Living in our
urban society, the human psyche has learned to siphon its energies in
one direction — coping with the material and tangible world. Huxley
made a plea in his book for the development of a psychedelic (literally,
a psyche-opening) drug, nonaddictive and harmless in its side-effects,
by which men and women could free their psychic energies and enjoy
the full range of their potential.

Carl, in the middle of his studies on dual personality, suddenly
found in Huxley a window opened for him onto a new horizon.
Perhaps, he now saw, what is often called a multiple-personality
problem really was a case of psyche freed — particularly at least — from
conventional bonds? Perhaps at least some so-called schizophrenics
were really enlightened people for whom the shock of enlightenment
has been too much? And perhaps such people exist in an altered state
of consciousness with which they could transcend the material and
tangible world around them, leap over the barriers of space and time,
and enjoy genuine liberty of spirit?

This was an important moment in Carl's development. What Huxley
had attempted and, with the aid of mescalin, achieved piecemeal, Carl
now aimed at achieving by developing and controlling his own psychic
gifts.

Thinking back, as he sometimes did, about the vision he had had as
a boy in his father's study, he now saw that vision as a foretaste of
what he could and should achieve: a perception of spirit, a participa-
tion in spaceless and timeless existence reached by a parapsychological
path. The aim of all Olde's instructions now appeared to Carl to be
simply a liberation of the mind and will from any involvement with
sensory experiences and material trammels. It was no wonder that
Wanola's disappearance from his personal life gave him no sense of
loss. In effect, she would have had to go, he concluded. There was no
room in his life now for a personal attachment that would involve
emotions and the physical presence of another human being.

Although Carl's study of parapsychology had begun in 1953 through
his association with Olde, it was about five years later that this interest
took on a consistently religious character. After two years of study and
research in Europe, he returned to the United States at the end of
1957, in order to take up a post as lecturer in the Midwest at the
beginning of 1958.

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 343

It was an attractive appointment for Carl: it gave him a good deal of
latitude for research. He found a small apartment not very far from the
campus and was given perfect space for his professional needs in the
department of psychology. There his life would be centered. He had a
reception room, a study for himself, and, opening off his study, there
was a room large enough for seminars, private lectures, and experi-
ments.

By the following year, Carl was well settled and had attracted a
small and enthusiastic group of assistants from among his better
students.

One evening, quite unexpectedly and while alone, Carl had the first
of what he and his associates later called "trances." He had just
returned to his office from dinner at a colleague's house. It was about
7:30 p.m. He had a great sense of tranquillity and confidence.

When he entered his study from the reception room, his eye fell on
the window facing west. The sun had not yet set, but there were
incandescent patches and streaks to be seen in the sky. The whole
window space looked like a two-panel canvas painted in reds, oranges,
blue-grays, gilded whites.

Carl crossed to the window, and as he gazed at the sunset, there was
a gentle but rapid transformation in him. His body became motionless,
as if held painlessly immobile by an unseen giant hand. He was frozen,
yet without any sensation of cold or paralysis.

Then the living scene outside took on the same odd aspect of
immobility and frozenness for him. Next, parts of the scene started to
disappear. First of all, everything in the intervening space between the
window where Carl stood and the sunset disappeared: quadrangle,
buildings, lawns, the road, the trees and shrubbery. It was not as if
they just remained on the periphery of his seeing. They altogether
ceased to be there for him. If he were to look for them, he knew at that
moment, he would not be able to find them. All seemed to have been
plucked out of sight. And their disappearance seemed to him to be
more normal than their permanency there in front of his eyes. For a
moment he felt very much at ease, for all the bizarre nature of what
was happening.

And, of course, the distance between him and the sunset was now a
formless vacuum after the disappearance of the objects on his
landscape. There was nothing "between" him and the sunset, not even
a gap, not even emptiness. He was no nearer to the sunset physically,
yet now he was knowing it intimately.

344 THE cases

Finally the window itself faded. Carl, meanwhile, had been looking
less and less at the eolors and hues of the dying sun; and, when the
window frame faded, he was "looking merely at the sun," although he
cannot express clearly in words the difference between those two
sights or the obvious importance it had for him at that moment.

Finally the viewed — what he was viewing — seemed to loom larger
and larger in his consciousness, but he himself seemed to be
diminishing correspondingly. Smaller. Smaller.

A sudden panic arose in him that he, too, might "disappear" from
his own consciousness, just as all the landscape had disappeared. That,
he was sure, would mean nothingness for him. And, as the viewed
loomed larger and more gargantuan in its weird nonphysical way, the
more miserable and expendable he felt.

At this low ebb in his feelings Carl experienced the initial stirrings
of what he later came to call "my friend." He always insisted that this
"friend" was personal — a person, but not a physical person. "It was a
personal presence," he maintained. It did not seem to "come" to him,
but to have been there all along; yet it was unexpected, and he had
never noticed it before that moment.

No words passed "between" Carl and his "friend," and no concepts
or images that he was aware of. But he knew with absolute certainty
he was being "told" that, unless he "nodded" or "gave approval," his
progress into nothingness would be a fact.

The anguish this possibility caused him was awful. Still, some aspect
of that personal presence seemed "deficient," seemed to leave him
with an option to say no. He had one brief, strange impulse to
challenge the absolutist demand for consent now being made upon
him. But a rapid confusion as strange as the whole incident dulled the
impulse to fight: he did not know how to issue the challenge. In the
name of what power would he "speak"? In whose name would he bear
the consequences, and how could he survive them? He says now for a
long time he had nourished no idea of aid or help or salvation, and he
had "no one or nothing to turn to or call upon." He had been brought
to nearly total aloneness, indeed, to the brink of nothingness.

Easily, therefore, and with relief, he "nodded." He gave his interior
approval. He still did not know exactly what this approval concerned.

Immediately the sense of being reduced to nothingness ceased.
Relief flooded his consciousness. Almost simultaneously he heard a
voice calling from a great distance.

"Carl! Carl! Are you all right? Carl!"

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 345

The window "reappeared" and the landscape. The sunset "with-
drew," and his vision was normal once again.

He stirred and looked around. Albert, one of his young assistants,
had a hand on his shoulder. Neither of them said anything for the
moment. They waited until the sun was completely down. Then, while
Albert listened, Carl sat down and dictated into his recording
machine.

What now emerged surprised even Carl. He spoke of the entire
trance as God-manifesting, as a religious experience. Turning to Albert
at one stage, and still dictating, he declared that he now saw his life's
work to be the finding of true spirit-life and an accurate knowledge of
God and his revelation — all by means of parapsychological research.

Carl's course was set. For the next five years he would work steadily
and methodically, building his theories, testing and developing his own
psychic powers, nourishing a group of students and assistants around
him.

In 1963 Carl became acquainted with the second person in his
university career who remained "opaque" to his psychic perceptions.
Father Hartney F. came into Carl's orbit almost ten years after
Wanola P., almost eleven years after Olde.

It was in the fall semester. Carl had just been made a full professor.
Father Hartney F. (or "Hearty," as he was called by his friends) was
the one member of the new class whom Carl could not quite
understand or "grasp" psychically. As had been the case with Wanola
P. a decade before, Carl's inability to get any "inner perceptions" of
Hearty intrigued him.

Hearty, however, looked completely normal, even innocuous. A
large, bony man rapidly going bald at that moment of his life, and
wearing thick-lensed spectacles, Hearty sat in the second row, looking
at Carl intently and taking notes from time to time. He always wore a
Roman collar and an impeccably clean black suit. During lectures he
rarely stirred, looked around him, or asked a question.

After Hearty's first term paper, which was no better and no worse
than average, and would not normally have provoked special interest
in Carl, Carl took the occasion to interview his "opaque" student.

He found the priest to be at heart a very simple man with a better
than average memory, robust health, thorough grounding in the basics
of psychology, and an ambition to study parapsychology for what he
called "pastoral purposes." Apparently he had convinced his bishop

346 THE CASES

that a knowledge of parapsychology would be particularly helpful in
working with his co-religionists and for understanding some of their
problems.

Offhand and, as it were, by the way, Hearty mentioned to Carl some
cases of diabolic possession. And he also spoke of Exorcism. At the
time it seemed to arouse very little interest in Carl's mind. He brushed
the topic aside into the back of his mind, so to speak, with some
remarks about the need of updating beliefs and rites in the Church.

Apparently having observed as much as he could or cared to after a
fairly short time, Carl ended the interview with a brief criticism of
some technical points in Hearty's term paper.

But Carl remained intrigued, and he was not unsympathetic when
two of his students, Bill and Donna, who were later to go with Carl to
Aquileia, suggested that they bring Hearty into a special study group
Carl had formed. Their argument was that the group needed a trained
representative of some Christian community because one of the
group's deeper objectives was to experiment with Carl's psychic
powers and gifts in order to probe the past of Christianity. Now,
Hearty was the only student in the department at that time who was a
cleric and who was trained in theology.

Carl decided to have another interview with this opaque cleric
before inviting him into the study group. He asked his two assistants,
Albert and Norman, together with the student members of the special
group, to be with him.

Hearty was a very easygoing man, very affable, a little slow to make
up his mind. As Albert and Norman listened to Carl's questions and
Hearty's answers, they had a growing persuasion that Carl was getting
nowhere. Hearty was not resisting. He was not even being evasive or
vague. It was just that, in spite of his perfectly frank answers to all the
questions put to him, Hearty seemed to be immune to Carl's
persuasion. And the reason for this was not any mental opposition on
Hearty's part or any verbal clashes between the two men. It was
something else.

All present would probably have put the problem down to a
fundamental difference in temperament between the two if it had not
been for one unfortunate turn in their conversation, when Hearty
seemed to take over the direction of the interview. Hearty wanted to
understand what basis there was for assuming, as Carl seemed
obviously to be doing, that psychic knowledge and psychic activity
inevitably led to spirit.

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 347

Albert conceded that it was a presupposition, but an acceptable
one.

Then Hearty wanted to know if that meant that psychic knowledge
and psychic activity were under the direction of the spirit?

Again, the answer was yes.

Well, then, it seemed Hearty had still another problem: unless they
claimed prior knowledge — which they didn't (of course not, they all
acknowledged; wasn't that, after all, why they had study groups: to
find out what they didn't know?), how could they be sure they were
under the direction or influence of a good spirit? Or did they presume
that all spirit was good? And if so, on what basis?

These questions represented such a fundamental doubting of the
position Carl shared with his group that the peace of the meeting was
shattered. As one of those present recalled, up to that moment in the
meeting "we had not known how pervaded our minds were with one
outlook [Carl's]." It felt, for Albert and Norman, as if some accepted
guest or some presence accepted among them had been insulted and
had started to grumble in resentment.

All of them started to question Hearty at one and the same time.
Carl held up his hand for silence. He was perfectly calm, but his eyes
were glittering and his face was very pale. Hearty's "opaqueness'' had
become transparent to Carl, for only that time and only for those
moments. Hearty was deeply opposed, Carl now understood, to all
that Carl stood for.

But Carl was cool; he was composed and self-controlled. All
students, he admonished his assistants, were free. And all points of
view were allowed. Moreover, Father F. (he stressed the "Father")
had a professional basis for his opinion.

Hearty quietly broke in to add that Carl, too, had a professional
basis for his position. There was an unexpected silence. For that
moment, some of the opaqueness of Hearty's psyche had been
dispelled, but Carl could not quite make out what he perceived dimly
in Hearty. Then Hearty "closed" up on him. He was "opaque" once
again.

Carl gave a deprecating smile and made a little gesture, as if to go
on to explain the professional basis of Hearty's opinion. But he stopped
and knitted his eyebrows. Every member of the group felt a new
tension in that silence. Hearty looked steadily at Carl.

Carl recomposed himself and looked pleasantly at Hearty. "And

348 THE CASES

what, Father," Carl finally said, "is your professional basis? In short, I
mean."

"Jesus. Jesus Christ, sir. As God and as man." Then, without
pausing, Hearty asked lightly: "And yours, Professor?"

Carl dismissed the query. Perhaps, he said, Father F. would become
a subject for group study some day as he, Carl, had already become. In
the meantime, they would table for the time being the motion of his
entry into the special study group.

The tension was gone.

From time to time during the remaining two years of Hearty's
studies, Carl racked his brains as to the "opaque" character of
Hearty's psyche. What did Hearty and Wanola P. have in common?
Suppose, indeed, that there was both good and evil spirit? But no
sooner would he put himself that question than the entire panorama of
his life would flood his mind; and always he ended with what was for
him an unacceptable alternative. A doubt of the fundamental point as
to what kind of spirit was leading him would mean a total revision of
his work. How could he do that? It could even mean resigning his
professorship and renouncing his parapsychological research.

In June 1964, after his final exams and thesis, Hearty had a short
farewell talk with Carl. He said he would like to stay in touch. It was a
pleasant moment for both of them. Carl felt good about his departing
student, in spite of his failure to pierce Hearty's psyche.

When Hearty departed, Carl found he could not work any more at
that moment. Something Hearty had said or, perhaps, done — Carl
could not quite tell — had struck an unaccustomed chord in Carl. He
sank his face in his hands and found himself crying unaccountably. He
remained sobbing for about ten minutes, and felt intense relief.

Then a slackened wire in his mind suddenly jerked tight and stiff
again. He sat up straight in his chair. His tears dried. The old mood
was back. There was work to be done.

It would be almost ten years before Carl and Hearty met again.

In the next eight years Carl experienced an almost permanently
altered state of consciousness. He received a similarly permanent
perception of what he called the "non-thing" aura (what Huxley had
termed the Non-Self aura) surrounding all objects. He had various
trances. And, above all, he underwent his "exaltation."

The first few times that Carl noticed the alteration in his conscious-

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 349

ness, he put it down to a complex of physical causes. The atmosphere
of a particular day when he sensed some change had been very clear,
he thought; it had rained for four days previously, and there was a
strong, blustering wind. On another occasion, he felt, the new
sensation was due to a great physical well-being and deep satisfaction
over the way some experimental work had gone. On still another
occasion, he put it down to an exhilarating discussion with some
colleagues.

Gradually, however, he acknowledged quietly to himself that some
deep alteration was taking place within him.

First of all, it had to do with what he sensed — saw, heard, felt,
smelled — but the newness and surprise of what he felt really lay in the
fact that it seemed to originate and reach "beyond" his senses. It was
"trans-sense." Second, it concerned people, animals, plants, and
inanimate objects. And, most importantly for Carl, it was theophanic.
He maintained it was a manifestation of deity. (Carl in those days
never spoke of "God" or of "the deity," but only of the "divine" and
of "deity.")

The earliest stages were simple, but very perplexing. Walking in the
street during the daytime crowd of shoppers, for example, or in more
solitary walks away from town, he would somehow switch his
consciousness away from eyes or hands or trees or the ground. Some
totality of individual traceries and patterns and meanings emerged,
instead, and became the center point of his consciousness.

In the street crowd he would suddenly stop seeing eyes or faces or
clothes; he would see, instead, a sort of pattern all the people traced as
their heads bobbed and moved toward him, or receded behind him, or
passed in the same direction as he was going.

But the sensation was quick, subtle as mercury. At first, when he
tried to seize it by his full attention, he chased it away, instead. Then,
when he went about his business again, it thrust itself back into his
consciousness.

After a number of experiences, Carl began to realize that the
traceries he saw were not bobbing heads or swaying tree branches, and
he was not seeing with his eyes. He was watching something with his
unaided consciousness. And what he saw was the buoyancy and
fluidity and free-streaming verve of spirit. Just spirit, untrammeled by
the chains of physicality.

After one of these experiences, Carl rushed back to his laboratory
and scribbled an excited record of the event: "It's theophanic! I've

350 THE CASES

done it! I've found the relation between psyche and spirit, between
consciousness and belief, between deity and human beings. I've found
it! I've found it! It's theophanic!" This entry in his notes is dated
March 1965.

In the following two years, the frequency and intensity of such
experiences increased. Sometimes it was the eyes of people, sometimes
it was the onward movement of their feet, sometimes it was their
heads. The meaning in each case was different; yet all the meanings
coalesced into an awesome totality.

Eyes were of a particular pattern. Over and above their color,
brightness or dullness, shape, individual expressions, every pair of eyes
seemed to constitute one reflection of a total seeing, an enlivening and
quickened sight. And all the pairs of eyes he saw were a unified
reflection of that totality, and at the same time completely individual.
The pattern they traced was not of one huge eye, but of one sight, of
one seeing.

It was in the same manner that in the onward movement of feet he
saw the power of that one being — he now called it "spirit" in his notes.
In the working of hands — holding, gesticulating, waving, pointing — it
was the spirit's subtlety. In the sound of voices it was not the accent,
the pronunciation, or the pitch of the voices that struck him. It was
what he called the "tonality." Each voice reflected a certain total
harmony, as water, without becoming light, reflects light; or a valley
wall, without becoming sound, reflects the sound of a shout; or colors,
without becoming a mood, reflect a mood; smells, without being
touchable, reflect surfaces and substances we have touched.

At the beginning of the following year Carl began to notice two new
elements in his constantly altering state of consciousness. There was a
great sense of "being with," of "being together with." What he was
"with" or "together with" on these occasions he dared not think out
too clearly, because he knew that would be the death of it all. But it
was a personal "being with." What he was "with" was intelligent, free,
supreme in some awesome but not frightening way. Slowly, over a
period of time, when note-taking or recording on his machine, he came
to refer to "my friend."

The second element was that the fits and starts of his experiences
were over. Now all was coalescing. All the traceries and patterns, all
the aspects of meaning and significance and existence seemed to come
as one. He realized after a brief spell that all the traceries had always
been one. But, he also realized, he could ^ave started to know that

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 351

oneness only through those initial fits and starts. Theophanic happen-
ings thus became a theophany, and everything now was seen by him as
united. Everything was an aspect of the one being.

Then subtly, simply as a suspicion at the beginning, Carl started to
feel some basic differences between what he called "my friend" and
this one being, this all-pervasive, free-moving, and independent spirit
in which all things were, but which was not itself just one of all other
things.

Whenever he "perceived" the slightest smidgeon of difference
between the "friend" and the "one," some sadness he could not
control entered him. He felt again as if he were going to be deprived,
as he had been at sixteen when his first vision had ended. He took even
more copious notes and made long recordings in order to catch and
retain everything he could.

In the last days of 1965 Carl began to perceive what he called the
"non-thing" aura of all objects and people around him. Until that
moment, and even when he was absorbed by that totality of being in
which all things were now bathed for him, Carl still did always see
them as things. Their "thingness" still was a basic characteristic.

Very early one morning he was walking the short distance from his
apartment to his office on campus. There was still some of the night
chill in the air, but a brisk wind moving the trees and rifling the grass
promised one of those zesty, sunny days Carl liked so much.

The last stretch of the walk was a path lined on the west side by a
row of poplar trees. On the east side there was a wide expanse of grass
sweeping away for about 200 yards to a row of buildings used by the
agricultural department. Behind the buildings there was a ridge of
high ground.

As he walked, Carl glanced eastward at the ridge, his eyes traveling
leisurely over the trees, shrubs, buildings, and grass, taking in the fresh
light that was creeping over everything.

He was so attuned and attentive to his own perceptions that he
immediately noticed a qualitative change. Each thing had something
more than mere thingness. It was that each one existed on the edge of
an abyss all its own, a vast chasm of "non-thingness," of what it was
not.

This experience was far more absorbing than even Huxley had
intimated in his lyrical description of the "Non-Self"; and its beauty
was more authentic and filling than anything expressed in each
physical object.

352 THE CASES

This "non-thingness" was an actual aura around every object. It was
dim and shallow and pale nearest to the object, but as Carl's eye drew
away from the object and into the object's aura, the aura deepened
and heightened in appearance and meaning.

Nothing, no object, Carl felt, would ever be banal anymore: it
would never again be merely itself, have only its own self, for him. The
aura of its non-thingness, its "Non-Self," glowed always and made the
thing possible. Carl made the quiet discovery that in the aura of each
thing there was no difference between appearance and meaning.

As his eye traveled and the "non-thingness," the "Non-Self," of each
object glistened and signified for him, he began to hear a vaster and
vaster choir of soundless voices, and to see a greater and greater
multitude of participants in worship. Each blade of grass chimed its
silent "Holy! Holy! Holy!" Every tree bowed and swayed in obeisance
to the supremacy of all existence, and each building stood in reverence
before the mystery of allness.

All this produced no shock in Carl. He did not even stop walking.
He seemed to be ready for it all. As he swung into the pathway to his
office, he felt in his mind one desire: that he be once and for all
exalted — even if just for a short time — to see and know that supreme
existence of all things and to see the holiness of its mystery that gave
all things meaning.

That exaltation would eventually come for him, but only four years
later.

It was in May 1969 that possession seemed to have been extended
further and deeper in Carl's life than ever before. That possession was
effected through his professional interests. His attention for about two
years previous to this date had concentrated on two aspects of psychic
development: astral travel and reincarnation. Both were in direct
relationship to Carl's all-absorbing aim of "finding out" the "true and
original Christianity."

By astral travel he hoped to transcend the boundaries of space and
time, and thus to "revisit" the locales where Christianity existed
before it was corrupted. By his researches in reincarnation — he
believed fully in it — Carl hoped to relive some ancient experiences of
his own, possibly even around the birth of Christianity.

In his researches, studies, and experimentation into astral travel,
Carl had by 1969 some proficiency in this psychic capability, but his
achievements had remained within traditional bounds. He usually
remained in sight of his own inert body and of locales known to him in

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 353

his physical life. And in some definite way he remained tied to the time
frame of the present moment. His immediate goal now was to find a
way out of that time frame. There must be, he maintained, some
"gate" through which he could pass to freedom.

With his two closest associates, Albert and Norman, and the student
members of his special study group, he now proceeded to launch a
series of experiments. He himself was the guinea pig; and, each time,
one of his trances became the starting point for an experiment. Carl
had apparently an enormous fund of psychic energy and was immune
to the injury that others sustained in such experiences.

The experiments took place in the audition room of his campus
offices. There he had had installed various machines for recording
voice and actions, and for monitoring his vital functions — heart, pulse,
respiration, and brain activity.

Albert functioned as chief monitor, with Norman as his immediate
assistant. Albert would interrogate Carl at key points in each
experiment. Until the last stages of this series of experiments, Carl
answered only direct yes-or-no questions put to him by Albert. The
other members of the group took on various assignments in operating
the machines.

Carl's optimum time for "trancing" was in the early morning, an
hour or so before sunrise. At the end of each trance session, the
assistants withdrew on Carl's instructions, and he was left alone to
recover his normal composure. Recovery periods lasted for any length
of time between ten and forty minutes depending on the length of the
session and Carl's psychic condition. When the assistants returned,
they usually found Carl sitting at the table recording his memories- —
sensations, thoughts, feelings, intuitions.

By repeated experiments, starting always with one of Carl's trances,
they found that astral travel was not to be accomplished in one step. It
was not a question of one, but rather three "gates." These he termed
"low-gate," "mid-gate," and "high-gate." Carl had to pass through
them all in order successfully to achieve full freedom of astral travel.

Low-gate was, more or less, the initial condition of trance: an
absence of all sensory reaction and feeling on Carl's part. Mid-gate
implied that Carl himself felt no relationship to his body; but,
nevertheless mid-gate still implied "immobility" on the part of his
psyche. High-gate, Carl figured, would mean that his psyche escaped
from that peculiar "immobility" of mid-gate and depart "freely" on
astral travel. The rest was discovery and revelation.

354 THE cases

The verification of Carl's passage to low-gate and mid-gate positions
was accomplished by a series of laboriously conducted experiments,
repeated and repeated, until they were all satisfied that objectively
Carl could be said to have reached these different positions. To help
our understanding of how these experiments went, we have the films,
tape recordings, and the minutes of the laboratory log, together with
Carl's own recordings made after each session. Some members of the
group have also contributed their recollections of what happened.

Once Carl was in a trance and all physical feeling (say, a pin stuck in
the sole of his foot) was negative for him, the assistants proceeded to
change the objects around Carl's inert body. They introduced objects
he had never seen — usually placards inscribed in another room by one
of the assistants. They placed them face up and face down; they
moved them around. They proceeded thus through a series of
experiments, testing Carl until they were sure that his responses
identifying the objects previously unknown to him were accurate and
were coming from the low-gate position.

As Carl recorded it, in low-gate position he was perfectly conscious,
but not through his senses. And he was observing from a position
outside his own body, at every side of it as well as beneath it and
above it and the couch upon which his body lay.

Mid-gate was the next goal. In all low-gate positions there always
persisted in Carl some instinctual relationship to his own inert body, as
he viewed it from ''outside." They understood that this instinctual
relationship was a "given" of normal human conditions. The aim was
to get rid of it.

All knew that there was a risk involved in shedding something so
basic and instinctual as the feeling for one's own body. What
guarantee was there that one could resume it, how could one "return"
to normal body living? Did one just escape from the relationship,
leaving it intact, and then return to its bonds? Or by leaving it did one
destroy it? No one knew. "But we must find out," insisted Carl.

In late 1968 Carl had the beginnings of mid-gate: in his trances now,
the relationship to his body was weakening; and, as the weakening
progressed, a strange, dimensionless condition of mind and will began
to fill his consciousness. Great caution was exercised by the assistants
and by Carl at that stage. Carl allowed a certain degree of weakening
of that instinctual bond, then returned again to full immersion in his
bodily senses. He then repeated the operation several times, until he
felt sure of his psychic energy and resources to help him back to

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 355

psychic normalcy and then, down past low-gate, back to physical
normalcy. Eventually, in the early summer of 1969, he fully attained
mid-gate.

At the end of the summer it was decided that they should aim for
high-gate. It was a Saturday morning. All proceeded in the orderly and
controlled manner adopted from the beginning. Carl passed into
low-gate and, without much delay, into mid-gate. At this point,
according to the plans made at the previous night's preparatory
meeting, there was a three-minute regulatory pause while they waited
for Carl to attain control of his psychic energy for the next and difficult
step.

When the three minutes were up, they started again. But quickly
Albert found he could get no answers or reactions from Carl. After a
sudden racing, pulse, heartbeat, and respiration had slowed down to
the pace "normal" for mid-gate. Physically Carl was "in normalcy."
Norman and Albert looked at each other and at the rest of the group;
there was nothing to do but to wait and keep monitoring Carl's vital
signs. It was a risk Carl had insisted be taken, and they had all agreed.

When Carl had reached mid-gate and Albert's interrogating voice
had ceased for the regulatory pause, Carl's progress had not stopped.
The diminishing relationship to his body had melted into nothing. And
he was suddenly within another ether or state: neither far from nor
near his body, neither light nor heavy, his whole self wholly
transparent to himself, desirous neither of death nor of life, neither
remembering anything nor forgetting anything, neither realizing
anything new nor ignoring anything old. In that state he had neither
past nor future. He was past mid-gate and into the high -gate position.

Albert, Norman, and the others were seriously worried at first when
the monitoring machines ceased to record any brain activity in Carls
body. But Carl had forewarned of this also and told them that perhaps
on the threshold of high-gate, and most probably in the high-gate
position, there would be no apparent brain activity, certainly none
that could be picked up by machines. But Carl had not been able to
predict anything more. His assistants had no inkling of Carl's
experience at that moment.

Quickly and simultaneously he surveyed an entire panorama. As he
tells it, it was a medley of faces and places and animals which he had
seen before either in real life or in books, faces such as the Ramses II
colossus at Abu Simbel in Egypt, a Minoan goddess from the sixteenth
century B.C., a lute player from ancient Tyre; places such as the Nike

356 . THE CASES

temple in Athens, the baths of Mohenjo-Daro, the early buildings of
Jericho, sheets of ice-capped land, swamps, swirling gases, deeps of
blackness; objects such as a sycamore tree in Pharaonic Thebes of the
eighteenth century B.C., the high places of Machu Picchu.

It was not a question of images or pictures; it was the actual places
and objects themselves. And an added peculiarity was that to Carl
they did not come singly, one after the other or separated in space and
time. He was ranging far above them, and they were simultaneously
present to him.

The recordings taken during this portion of the session are silent
except for the whispers of his associates. Carl was silent throughout
high-grate.

After 25 minutes Albert and the others were beginning to become
alarmed, when the pulse and heartbeat monitors began to record a
faster pace. Carl must be "returning," reviving, they knew. He was
beginning to respond to Alberts direct commands and suggestions. In
another ten minutes it was all over. Carl opened his eyes slowly and
blinked in the electric light.

They all filed out, leaving Carl his accustomed time to recover.
When they returned some 15 minutes later, he was dictating into the
recording machine as much as he could recall of that high-gate astral
travel. The elation of the group as they listened was understandably
high. They still had to devise some method of verifying the data of his
high-gate travel, but they had full confidence that such controls could
be devised with repeated experiments.

Albert, Norman, and Carl were the last to leave the audition room.
Their path lay across the campus to the dining room. As they walked,
they discussed the salient points of Carl's trance. There were two or
three aspects of Carl's astral travel that Norman was sure were unique,
even in the low-gate and mid-gate states. He mentioned especially the
peculiar time frame within which Carl seemed to move during the
trance, and he remarked on the bodiless experience of Carl at certain
moments of his experience: not only had Carl felt as if he was looking
at his own inert body; he felt as if he had been definitively separated
from it.

As they continued to talk, Albert and Norman were what they now
call "taken over" or "totally dominated" by some psychic dimension of
Carl.

THE ROOSTER AND THE TORTOISE 357

Carl was just explaining the absence of distance during astral travel.
They both recall his saying: "Take, for example, that ridge over there."
He indicated the high ridge that flanked his favorite walk. "You see it
as a vertical dimension, some distance from you, on your horizontal
plane."

At that point, their perception of the ridge itself was no longer as of
an obstacle on their horizon. The ridge was as much there as it had
been the moment before this peculiar change. But now they were
neither distant from the ridge nor near it, neither level with it nor
lower in level, nor above it. They had, in other words, no sense of
distance. In their description of it, the experience seems something
like Carl's experience the evening when all distance had disappeared
between him and the sunset outside his study window.

And the same change affected their relationship to each other and to
Carl. Without any perception of distance or space between them, they
were "with" him, "with" each other. The only material relationship
that remained was that of presence: they were present to each other.

They were also aware of another change, this time in Carl. He was
present to them and they, to him. But he was more present to, more
"with," something or someone else. And they were not so present to or
"with" that something or someone else as Carl was. They witnessed his
"meeting" with